Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Will the Taoiseach back the growing calls for debt relief for Ukraine? Even the US Congress has now backed calls for suspending all debt service payments by Ukraine and for debt relief. Ireland has reportedly given around €20 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine but the Ukrainians are spending 300 times that amount, or €6 billion, this year just servicing their odious debt. This means that all of our humanitarian aid amounts to less than 40 hours of servicing that debt. Unless the debt is cancelled, the money is really just going back out the door to the IMF, the World Bank and others rather than actually supporting the victims of this brutal war. We have seen for ourselves how crippling such debts can be and the impact of IMF-backed austerity. So far, however, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney, has said that debt forgiveness risks impairing the IMF's financial integrity, as if the IMF is about to go bankrupt, which is clearly ridiculous. Will the Taoiseach support debt relief?

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