H.E. Mrs. Larisa Miculet:

I thank the Deputy for his concerns. He is absolutely right. All of our state authorities try to work not only on what happens today, but to look ahead and to consider all possible or impossible scenarios because we are realistic in approaching the situation. With regard to our future needs, I was looking at that bridge yesterday on the map and saw that it was also a way to go from that part of Ukraine to Romania and to other parts. If that is cut, they can come only through this narrow Palanca area because on the other side, as the Deputy said, is Transnistria. It is very narrow.

I spoke yesterday with the leadership of my ministry, who have a big role in these activities, and they told me that further relocation is one of our priorities and concerns. We have to take into consideration that more refugees may suddenly, at one moment, come to our country. That is why we must consider relocation.

There are two tracks with regard to developing assistance in Moldova. As I said, one is the immediate need in regard to refugee flow and another is the support platform for Moldova. One is helping Moldova just to survive itself because we still have that impact of the Covid pandemic, followed by the energy crisis, when we were not cut off but our prices were raised to $1,000. On energy resilience, we need help and support. As I said, we are also looking for new markets. All of this is just for the country itself to survive.

This country is taking care of citizens on one hand and dealing with refugees on the other. Both these pillars are very important to us.

There is probably an appropriate place in this second pillar of energy resilience and helping to build stronger capacity for our state agencies. The issue will probably be discussed in more depth in the Moldova support platform of which Ireland is a part. The Department of Foreign Affairs and other agencies that are participating in the platform can probably provide the committee with more concrete information on what was requested through that mechanism. It is not only dealt with bilaterally but via the platform, which we hope will work better in putting all needs together and seeing what our partners can do to work together and respond, strengthening our resilience as a state in general, keeping us stable and aiding us in dealing with the flow of refugees.