Neale Richmond (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the Minister's frankness. He touched on many key areas, so I will ask supplementary questions to the points he raised to elicit additional information. I will begin in or around where he finished off, that is, the reconstruction conference held last week in Switzerland and the feasibility of future pledging conferences. The Minister will be aware that our wider European political family, the European People's Party, called for a European Marshall Plan for the reconstruction of Ukraine. One of the central tenets of that is seizing the assets that have been frozen and using the at least €36 billion taken from the Russian regime and its supporting oligarchs to fund that reconstruction. Would the Government support such a proposal and is it prepared to start working on putting those assets into some form of escrow account for pledging?

I will briefly touch on two other areas. The Minister stated that Ireland supports the toughest possible sanctions and is ready to support a ban on Russian gas. That is extremely welcome. Unfortunately, there are holes in the current sanctions - not due to their application by EU member states and certainly not in the case of Ireland - because of European partners and countries outside the EU. I will not name those countries, but they continue to maintain relatively normal relationships with Russia and Putin's regime. If we support tougher sanctions, will the Government push within the European Council to put more pressure on those countries outside the EU that are undermining European sanctions against Russia and sanctions by the wider world, including the US, Canada, Japan and Australia? It is quite apparent that there are countries that are prepared to accept Russian money and accommodate Russian oligarchs, assets and everything else. It is in defiance of the general will.

The Minister says Ireland stands ready to do more. I fully agree with him. I welcome all the work that has been done by officials across the Government. However, I feel we can do more. I reiterate that we need to look at our support for all European projects, including the provision of lethal military aid towards the Ukrainian army and the donation of surplus javelin missiles and other stock we hold here.