Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This has come to light while we have been sitting. There may well be actions taking place in the Department of Foreign Affairs at the moment. I believe this became public sometime after 1 o'clock today, so it is breaking news. The idea that I would come in here with a formulated response to something that has appeared on a website in the past couple of hours would not be correct. Our entire focus is on helping Ukraine. We can stand here and say how terrible this statement is but all the while missiles will be dumped on Ukraine, affecting its people.

We must keep our focus on that, which is what we have been doing. I will come to the other issue, but the manner in which the Russian Federation has done this contrasts completely with what the EU has done, which has been to be entirely open about how we issue sanctions, namely, people passing laws-----

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