Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish to thank the Vice Chairman and other members of the committee for affording me this unique experience to make a presentation as a member of the committee, rather than the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade giving us the storyline.

This is the first time we have used a mixture of verbal and visual elements in a presentation. I wish to thank the staff who have worked with me in making this event possible. It is an interesting day on which to have this presentation because, as members will know, in less than an hour's time Parliament will formally move that the association agreement between Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine will revert back to this committee next week. We are therefore in on time.

My interaction with embassy staff has in the main been with Georgia and Ukraine. Unfortunately, I have not yet met the Molodovan representatives in Ireland. I am going to present my own personal view and interpretation of what I experienced when I was an election monitor in Moldova. I have monitored Moldovan elections twice.

At the most recent election I have represented the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly of which I am a member. Coloured by my previous experience in Ukraine where I have covered two elections, one in the controversial areas in the eastern region of the country, I note that we should collectively learn some lessons from that to apply to Moldova. There are very interesting comparisons. I covered elections for ODIHR in Luhansk and Donetsk and am very familiar with the region in conflict currently.

We are conscious collectively, as we keep talking about it, of how this terrible disaster unfolded and what role Europe played in the association agreements with Ukraine, asking if something went wrong. There are many things which have not gone right which we hope will never be repeated. I was very impressed by the High Representative, Ms Mogherini, on Monday when she spoke about the Eastern Partnership countries being our friends. They are friends along with the southern partnership countries and we have friends of neighbours and neighbours of neighbours which Europe must relate with. In the Eastern Partnership, there was another country involved, which was Armenia, and it pulled out. The Russians started to feel threatened by the growth of European sentiment in former Soviet republics and created a customs union called the Eurasian Economic Union. Sadly, Armenia opted - under pressure - for the union.

We are now about to debate three very important countries in the Eastern Partnership. I emphasise my personal belief that they share many things in common, but one aspect in particular. For example, Georgia has a disputed territory called South Ossetia. Ukraine has Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian region of Donetsk and Luhansk to contend with. Moldova has a territorial conflict around Transnistria. Each of the three countries we are talking about has territorial and geographical problems. Russia is involved to a lesser or greater degree as is the issue of language, particularly the Russian language. Given the geopolitics of the region, language is a very important issue and it has to be addressed.

The official figures are that there are 3,421 Moldovans in Ireland. While those are the official census results, I do not believe them. It is fascinating when one gets to know the Romanian or Moldovan community how it can be very blurred as to whether people are Moldovans or Romanians or whatever. It is important to point out that Romania got into the EU much more quickly and is a full member. It would have been opportune for many Moldovans with a relevant mother or father to claim their Romanian passports. It gave them greater flexibility and mobility. In that, we can prove that hundreds of thousands of Moldovans opted for the choice of a Romanian passport.

I am not sure how many members have been in former Soviet republics, but I emphasise the obvious communist influences that I noted when I was in Kyrgyzstan and Luhansk and Donetsk. One sees huge statues of Lenin, the term CCCP, and hammers and sickles everywhere. As a westerner from a liberal democracy who sees that for the first time, one is made to think about the attitudes of people, their understanding of world politics and their aspirations. It is fascinating and anyone who gets the opportunity to travel under whatever guise to these countries should note that the world is rather complex.

In respect of the culture, language and the position on wars of those countries emerging from under the Russian yoke, we know the position on the right in Ukraine and should be very conscious of the fact that the Russians lost so many in fighting for the liberation of these countries from Nazi control.

I will move on to the main presentation which will not take that long.