Mr. Tony Connelly:

I will respond to a number of questions. Senator Hayden asked about Ireland's bilateral engagement with other countries and if we had ditched countries with which we were more akin to in the light of our experience, such as Greece and Spain, and were moving towards alignment with northern European countries. I think it is of benefit to Ireland that we are sufficiently pragmatic as it is not necessarily a zero sum game and the Government has managed to navigate different viewpoints and different camps in Europe. The reality was that during the bailout we had to decouple ourselves from Greece in order to restore the trust and the attractiveness of the financial markets. It was an expedient the Government had to follow. The Government made it almost a virtue that we were not like Greece or Portugal but that we were something different. That went down rather badly on the streets of Greece. Certainly at some of the demonstrations that I covered at the time there was some resentment towards Ireland for its cavalier attitude, as it was perceived at the time, but having gone through the EU-IMF programme the Government is in the vanguard of reform, partly through choice because the policy choices that Ireland made had been embarked upon before the EU-IMF programme started. We are seen as in the vanguard of reform and the Government will want to stay the course.

I think Ireland has been very successful in keeping bilateral relations solid. It is the same chemistry that people talk about in Brussels - the Irish diplomats' ability to put people at their ease, their ability to blend business and pleasure. That is a gift that successive governments have and they would do well to keep hold of those gifts.

Deputy Byrne raised the question of Ukraine. There is a debate in Europe as to whether Europe lost Ukraine rather than Russia winning Ukraine. The problems that people are declaiming on the streets of Kiev are the exact same problems and frustrations that accompanied the orange revolution ten years ago. The frustrations that ordinary people have about the rule of law, the brutality of the police and corruption have not gone away. They are being repeated. The European Union was in a very difficult position. It could not offer full membership to Ukraine but had to offer some kind of half way perspective that would sufficiently reassure the population of Ukraine without alienating Russia but there is no doubt that once the eight Eastern Europe states joined the European Union and joined NATO, the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin was going to be on the defensive. Ukraine occupies a place in the former Russian imperial soul that means that it is something the Russian government will not give up easily. It is an intractable problem. One could argue that diplomatically not enough attention was paid to the other part of Ukraine, as Deputy Byrne said, that it was left on a one way street, in terms of bringing the government and the people of Ukraine in a more European direction.