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

I thank Dr. Visoka. His last point on the fear of an eastern shift is one of the first points we made. To a degree, that has created the stasis. The language has changed somewhat since the onset of the Ukrainian crisis, but the impression I get from Dr. Visoka and the previous speaker is that people are not seeing this in real terms. Representatives from North Macedonia were before the committee and, on some level, they said as much. They made all the complaints that Dr. Visoka did but they did say that the engagement was at least a bit more real now. I would like that to be the case. In fairness, though, I went through his opening statement, which dealt with all the issues. He said that the EU at times is crisis managing and possibly has not been the perfect player in this and the problem is there is a lot of unfinished business in respect of Kosovo, Republika Srpska and all these issues. What can Ireland and the EU do to move this on? I imagine that a certain element in Serbia, which is probably supported by the Russians, does not really intend for this situation to be normalised. We are getting into the issue of territorial disputes and I do understand the importance of that. However, it is a matter of how we move this on because we all accept that we need to give these people a European future. We all know that this matters to Europe on a geopolitical level but there are particular issues that need to be dealt with. That also includes the rule of law issues.