Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:

-----and not by arming up. We already have two very powerful examples in the world wars. We saw military investment and expansion, a growth in military forces, and ended up in world wars. We have seen that happen twice. Here we are not learning the lessons of the past and militarising again. That is not going to end well. If you want to learn from the past, then Europe should be investing in peace, dialogue and negotiations. There were two moments in 2022 when Ukrainian and Russian officials were sitting down at a table together discussing peace. Europe did not send a peace envoy to those discussions. On the fourth day of the Ukraine war, teams of negotiators from Ukraine and Russia were sitting down to talk. It was at that precise moment that Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels and Olaf Scholz in Berlin decided they were going to send hundreds of billions of euro worth of weapons to Ukraine. That was four days into the war. If we wanted peace, why did we not at that point refrain from offering military assistance and say we would send a peace envoy to the peace talks? Here we are, more than three and a half years later, and it is as clear as day that sending weapons to Ukraine has done nothing to stop the war but has only prolonged it. The Ukrainians are paying the highest price.