Mr. Conor O'Neill:

That is an excellent and really important question and something we probably should have raised in more detail. A lot of the discretion on service has been academic and legal. It is a question of what the pathway is as an EU member state to do this, and we have set that out clearly. We should not overcomplicate the practicality of this. In 2014, when Russia occupied large swathes of Ukrainian territory, the entire European Union rightly and reflexively implemented these types of measures in response. They banned not only the import of goods from Russian entities in occupied Ukrainian territory but also financial and other investment services in the territories. There is a ban on brokering, construction and engineering services related to infrastructure, a ban on tourism services and so on. That has been expanded since because we have had, I think, 16 or 17 full sanctions packages since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The point I want to make is that the very measure, the regulation of services and the prohibition on services with occupied territory, is already in place as regards Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia. There is already an obligation on Irish entities not to be involved in that. That was done within a matter of months in 2014 because the political context was there. It is important to note that, as Mr. Liston set out, as regards the type of regulation we are looking at, we know about the entities we have mentioned in the opening statements that are actively involved in facilitating the provision of services in the settlements, and it is absolutely not beyond the capacities of the State to regulate that properly. We have done it in other contexts. This is not a new ask; we just want it to be consistently applied.