Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy will be aware that Ireland's participation in Europe is very strong and active. We are engaged in the negotiations with regard to the MFF as a very strong, committed European partner. The new MFF has not been agreed yet. Clearly, there is some risk of default at some point and in that scenario all member states would be exposed. We would hope the exposure would be extremely limited or could be avoided, however. At this point, when we do not have any clarity on what is likely to happen in Ukraine, I am not sure it is helpful to speculate on the future of that state. We are trying to provide support and get it through this very difficult period. We are also trying to support its passage into the EU as a member state.

It is very important to remember that this is much like the case of Ireland, when there were calls to default and do different things and a long-term profile approach was taken that helped to avoid too much early repayment of the principal amounts. In fairness, that approach reduces the risk of non-payment.

We have seen structures like that in the past elsewhere in other parts of the European Union.

There is a grace period being factored in of ten years for principal repayments and steady repayment of principal in relatively small amounts up to 35 years. The Deputy is quite correct to highlight the risk in the worst possible scenario but there is an attempt to mitigate that risk, both through the accession of Ukraine as an EU member - there would be a lot of work done in relation to that - but also in relation to the structure of the loans in terms of interest and the principal repayments. Of course there is form in this way with the EU in terms of managing some of these instances previously. We only have to look to ourselves as a successful example of how we have been able to prudently repay and go from being a considerable net recipient to a net contributor of EU funds. In particular, our position as a net contributor of EU funds, the experience of having been a net recipient and the experience of recipient of emergency donations makes us all the more alive to the need to structure loans in a way that is sustainable for a new member state coming into the EU, developing and being able to flourish, as we hope will happen. We hope not to have that difficulty.

The Deputy will be as well aware as I that there are longer term matters of political engagement and geopolitical stability. I am quite sure that the Deputy, like me, would work to make sure that works over time in the EU.