Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Gannon. His proposal seems helpful. Otherwise, I could pick and choose my answers, which would not do at all, obviously.

I thank Deputies Brady and Stanton for their recognition of the quality of our UN team in New York. Trust me: they are phenomenal. As to what they have done over the past four days, I was there on Friday and we thought we would get an agreement on the wording of the resolution across the line that day. That did not happen, and they have been working literally night and day through the weekend and into today. At 9.30 this morning, New York time, we managed to get agreement on a wording. I think it was the best possible wording. It is not ideal. We would have liked to have got certainty on a 12-month extension. What we got, effectively, was certainty on a six-month extension and then a possible further six months, but there will need to be an updated resolution in six months' time to deliver the second half of that. The voting patterns were quite clear. The P3 - in other words, the UK, France and the US - abstained, and Russia and China and the other ten supported the proposal, seeing the sense in what we were trying to do. It just reflects the division and tension between the P5 members on these issues. Our job was to get the job done and to keep the humanitarian assistance flowing. That is the job of the penholder. We forced a vote because we felt it necessary to do so. Russia vetoed that at the end of last week. We have managed to get as good an outcome as was possible, which I think will be an enormous relief to the people working on the ground filling up trucks with food, medicines, clothes and all sorts of other things.

In terms of Ukraine, we are big supporters of the ICC. In fact, I will be in The Hague on Thursday at an accountability summit, conference or meeting. As the committee knows, when I was Kyiv I announced a financial support package of €3 million for the ICC, not just for Ukraine but for its activities more generally to make sure the prosecutor has the resources he needs to gather evidence and put case files together, which is really important.

In terms of what is being done to ensure Russia is being held accountable for its actions, the strong international condemnation of Russian aggression has triggered the operation of many different mechanisms to address accountability issues arising in Ukraine. These include technical support to assist Ukrainian authorities in collecting, storing and preserving evidence in line with international standards, the investigation of the ICC that I referred to and the work of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE, in terms of the Moscow mechanism. Eurojust is co-ordinating investigations and prosecution efforts between Ukraine and member states, including the joint investigation team set up by Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine, together with the ICC and recent additional members Estonia, Latvia and Slovakia. The US, EU and UK recently established an atrocity crimes advisory group to support the co-ordination of their respective accountability efforts on the ground. There is also a wide range of initiatives by NGOs. There is a lot going on in this space. We are supporting a lot of it, but our primary financial support has been for the ICC. I met the prosecutor in Ukraine and the chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, before travelling to Kyiv to make sure we are giving the right support where it is needed.

It is fair to ask what we are doing to verify that sanctions are working. In truth, it is not is not an exact science. If we are trying to build pressure over a short period of time, we do not have the capacity to be able to review over months the impact of sanctions. We have had six rounds of sanctions agreed. The Commission is working on a seventh. The seventh round will, in my view, not involve the banning of gas. Rather, it will focus on a whole range of other things. It will also focus on ensuring the existing sanctions are working and loopholes are closed.

From our perspective, this is about the politics and reality of ensuring that the continuation of this war has a growing cost so that there is a disincentive to its continuation. If the EU did not apply sanctions and did not increase the weight of those sanctions with each round, that would send a very clear signal to Russia that it has a green light to continue what it is doing, and it does not. This is illegal, brutal and aggressive. It involves multiple war crimes on a weekly basis and has to have a consequence and cost.

Ireland has traditionally been very cautious around sanctions generally, in terms of ensuring there are safeguards around protecting the supplies of humanitarian assistance, people's human rights and so on. In this instance, we feel the strength of EU sanctions and their increasing cost to the Kremlin has to be a very strong statement. The reality is that some of the sanctions also introduce hardship within the European Union. These are not cost-free for us, but the continuation of the war also has an extraordinary cost. We are seeing the human consequences with over 40,000 Ukrainians coming to live with us for their own safety over the past number of months. The most impactful weapon the EU has is its economic muscle and creating a cost for Russia in continuing the war, as well as the support we give to Ukraine.

Maintaining public support is a fair question. Maintaining public support for all that we are doing for Ukraine is something we need to be careful of in terms of supporting Ukrainians here in the context of pressure on housing and so on, and the humanitarian, military and, of course, political support we are providing. There is a consequence on Ireland as well as Ukraine to the war continuing, although we should not compare the two. Obviously, there is a cost of living and inflation impact as a result of Russia's decisions.

Moldova is a country that needs our help and that is why I am going there. We made a commitment to support Moldova and to take 500 Ukrainian displaced people from it into Ireland in order to try to ease the burden. That has proven to be a little bit more complicated than one might think. Trust me, there is no lack of will here. Ireland is not applying any quotas or visas. Anybody who travels from Ukraine to Moldova into Romania and then onto Ireland is free to come here and we will look after them as best we can. We will also try to work with the Moldovan authorities to ensure we can share some of the burden they are facing at the moment.

There are practical issues around language and willingness to travel. We must not forget that most Ukrainians want to stay close to Ukraine. That is why there are about 4 million Ukrainians in Poland right now. Poland has been extraordinary in regard to this effort. It is a solidarity and generosity that, to be perfectly honest, I have never before seen in Europe. I was not around during the world wars, for obvious reasons, but Poland's status in the European Union in the context of the leadership and solidarity it has shown to Ukraine has been very significant, and should be recognised as such. I have had a number of meetings with the Moldovan Foreign Minister. I understand I will meet the Foreign Minister and Prime Minister and we will do all we can to try to give practical assistance to Moldova.

In terms of food security, when I was in New York last week I had a good discussion on UN efforts, along with Turkey, Russia and Ukraine, to try to find a way of getting grain out in larger quantities. There are about 20 million tonnes of grain in storage in silos and they are about to start harvesting in Ukraine. All of its storage facilities are full. We have to try to get grain out of Ukraine. The EU has opened up humanitarian supply lines through EU countries via rail, and that has gotten about 5 million tonnes of grain out, but a lot more can only be moved in the volumes that are needed via ships out of ports in southern Ukraine in the Black Sea.

Therefore, there is a possibility that we could see agreement in the not too distant future on a mechanism that can guarantee Ukraine's security in terms of Russian aggression coming from the Black Sea, in particular towards the city of Odesa, and also get ships safely out past waters that are mined into an agreed area where inspections can take place and ships can move into other ports that are in need and are waiting for these supplies. There has been a huge amount of work done over the past number of weeks to try to make progress on that issue. I do not honestly know whether it will come off, but there are increasing expectations and hopes that it may be possible to do something. We will have to wait and see. It needs to happen quickly, otherwise we will find new pressures post harvest in Ukraine.

I am getting technical notes on what I am saying, so I do not want to repeat myself. On the pressure on the World Food Programme, I met the head of the programme in Italy a few months ago. It would normally source about 60% of its wheat from Ukraine, Belarus and Russia combined.

Obviously, that is now completely disrupted. They are sourcing from elsewhere but that is taking food supply that would otherwise find its way into the system. It is a zero sum game. If you take 22 million tonnes of grain out of the system along with vegetable oils, maize and other important foods, they are very difficult to replace at short notice. As we have seen, that drives the prices of these food products up dramatically and in some cases makes it almost impossible to source them at all at any price. It is having a really big impact on some countries. I am thinking of Lebanon and Egypt and a number of countries across the horn of Africa. Because of increased costs the World Food Programme is under pressure with the funds available to it. David Beasley, the head of the World Food Programme, has spoken of having to take food from the hungry to give to the starving in places like Yemen. These are the consequences of war.