Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Over recent weeks everybody has had growing concern about the situation in Ukraine. It took a very nasty turn over the last 24 hours with an enormous bombardment across Ukraine of missiles. One of the missiles, whether it came from Russia or Ukraine, landed in Poland. We should be very seriously concerned about the advancement of Russia's war. I am also concerned that Irish politicians have been placed on this list and we need to deal with that. The Government will have the support of everyone in the House to do something firm over what Russia intends to do regarding parliamentarians from these Houses who clearly stand with democracy and who clearly have a voice to be heard in respect of that.

The big issue with the war in Ukraine and all these developments is security across Europe, particularly food security and energy security. We need to have a co-ordinated effort across the European Union to deal with these issues. The previous speaker mentioned CETA. There is an element of international trade and elements which are blocking that and are causing issues in that regard. Of course, many people have concerns about CETA and particularly the impact the investment court may have. We also need to deal with that. Developments in the past few days on both these issues concern us all and should concern the Government greatly. We need to ensure that we provide a solution to it. Clearly, I think the solution that has been set out by the courts is that we need a referendum on CETA. That needs to happen as quickly as possible and Government needs to move to do that.

The issues of food security and energy security in the European Union relate to an issue raised by another colleague here in regard to the Horn of Africa, namely, the impact that climate change is having on the entire world and our need to move away from fossil fuels including gas and to have alternatives. Each country in Europe cannot do that on its own; we have to work together to do that. We need co-ordinated efforts across the entire European Union not just to resolve the problems that we have with own addiction to fossil fuels, but to resolve the problems the entire world has with global warming.

Some changes have happened in the recent months internationally. The election in Brazil gives many people hope that there might be a change in respect of that. The lungs of the Earth, the rainforests, are somewhat safer than they were some time ago. Many people also took great hope from the elections in the US that things may be moving in the correct direction. Within the European Union we have had a number of elections recently. Italy and Hungary seem to be going in the opposite direction. We need to be firm over where the world politics needs to go. We need to look after people rather than vested interests. We need to look after the needs of our communities across the entire globe rather than looking after the needs of corporate interests. For too long that has been the play. It has been about the big corporations and what they need delivered for them rather than what needs to be delivered for the people.

Overall, the war in Europe and the situation with global warming are issues that need to be addressed in a co-ordinated fashion across the entire European Union.

See this speech in context