Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank H.E. Ms Sochaska and H.E. Dr. Stefan. I apologise for the dreadful pronunciation but I usually get away with it because people generally mangle my name also.

I want to thank the people of Poland and Romania. In fairness, the one beacon of light in all of this has been the solidarity and the fact people have done all they possibly can from the point of view of ensuring they are saving lives and taking people out of what is an absolutely dreadful situation. We have all been very clear that the responsibility for this lies with Vladimir Putin, and it is as simple as that.

With regard to what the two ambassadors have spoken about, there is obviously a fair amount of governmental communications. We are dealing with a huge humanitarian crisis that is only going to get worse. We know we are talking about millions of people on the move, in large part women and children. Beyond that, we could be talking of the movement of 4 million right up to 12 million people, or possibly even more. I imagine services within their countries and other countries have to be at the absolute end of their tether. It is about how that system will be able to operate when the numbers increase. What are the asks? I want to put on the record here what we can do to facilitate what is needed, where there are blockages, where there are difficulties and what else needs to happen.

Beyond that, obviously, the Poles know better than most about war and occupation. We all know that at the beginning of the Second World War there was the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. Poland was ripped asunder and it went from terrible to even worse and beyond comprehension for most people. I guess that will add a certain prism to how the Poles see this.

With regard to the world in which we now find ourselves with this Russian aggression, while we are all hoping for a diplomatic outworking of this and hoping there is a chance for peace, I want to know what the thinking is within Poland and Romania in regard to where this goes. We are all taking guesses in regard to where Vladimir Putin is, what a win looks like for him and where the endgame is, and I am not sure anybody has come up with that answer. Will the ambassadors comment on that and on any specific preparations that are being made. I accept they cannot go into all of them and they probably would not be aware of all of them. Given the situation in Ukraine, however, we are talking of a fear of further escalation and that chemical and nuclear are never that far off the agenda.