Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate what Deputy John Brady said about the 52 officials, including members of the Government and Members of the Oireachtas, who have been declared personae non gratae. I am fairly sure that nobody was preparing to travel to the Russian Federation. This is an affront to our democracy and to our place in the world. We need to ask Ambassador Yuri Filatov to make his journey home. If the Government will not agree to that, then we definitely need some sort of action to be taken in respect of this matter. One could quite easily say that Russia has one hell of a nerve, given what it is engaged in doing. We have had the utterly criminal invasion of Ukraine. There has been an escalation in attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure. Our hearts go out to those two men who lost their lives in Poland 10 km from the border with Ukraine. Unfortunately, civilians will always face severe penalties in war situations. When an opportunity arises, we have to play our part, as many others do, in ensuring that we can actually get Ukraine to a more peaceful and hopefully a more prosperous future.

I agree with what others have said. In the context of Trump, Brexit and Marine Le Pen, a mistake has been made and there is a major issue in the sense that people have been left to the side and have felt peripheral. If we are talking about the energy crisis and the other crises we are dealing with, we need Europe and we need domestic governments to deal with the issues that impact on our people.

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