Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I may be one of the dissenting voices on the expulsion of the Russian diplomats yesterday. It was the wrong movement from our Government because keeping the door open with Russia is important. Does the Minister of State expect to see any retaliation from the Russians on that?

I see the Minister of State wished Turkey well in the peace talks. The Minister of State is a leader in Ireland, which is a neutral country. Have we reached out to all other neutral nations to see if we could be part of a process of putting together some groups to negotiate in peace talks between Ukraine and Russia?

I said the last time the committee met that we need some kind of Covid-style response within the European Union to this crisis. There are over 6 million people displaced, which is a significant number. I would like to see more work being done by Europe and more help coming from the EU to Ireland. We are talking about taking in 200,000 people but we have very limited resources. I do not know if the Minister of State has seen the photographs on social media of the tent-style housing being put up at Gormanston Camp at this point. There are 2 million refugees in Poland and it has not put up any tented villages. There are 500,000 refugees in Hungary and it has no tented villages either. I am very much against putting up any emergency tented villages to house our refugees, even temporarily. It seems the Hungarians and Polish are doing this better than we are for once.

It seems we waited nearly five weeks before we took action on Russian diplomats and a couple of dogs in Europe had to bark first before we started taking action yesterday. We waited for others to act and then we acted simultaneously. I would like to hear the Minister of State's views on what retaliation might be expected from Russia.