Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Ó Murchú raised the shocking intensification of the war by Putin against the people of Ukraine. It is a brutal, savage attack on civilians and on a collective people. I was glad to hear this morning that Tony Connelly from RTÉ is in Kyiv to report live to us. It is important that broadcasting services can tell the world about the naked aggression of Russia and its efforts to freeze people out of their homes, villages, towns and cities. It is an extraordinary act of warfare to apply such terror to people, with a clear objective of trying to subjugate and suppress their desire to belong to the European Union, to a democracy and to their country.

It is a shocking development on the Continent of Europe that such violence and wilful murder of people is taking place at the level it is. Deputy Ó Murchú is correct that Russia has weaponised energy, food and migration. That has created huge challenges for the EU.

I think the Deputy used the phrase, "needs to get its act together on the energy front", in respect of the EU but it has done quite well. There are 27 member states and each has different energy mixes and backgrounds in terms where their energy comes from. There is a range from the Iberian Peninsula to Hungary to Ireland. We get most of our gas from the UK and Norway. We get the bulk of our gas from the UK and that is stable from a security-of-supply perspective. Gas stocks have reached the targets the Commission set across the EU. That was a good day's work and has stabilised pricing. Europe is now looking at further mechanisms to avoid the speculator being enabled to create price hikes. I acknowledge we are stabilising prices at a very high level. I think it is 300-odd pence a therm compared with 55 or 60 pence a therm before the crisis. It was 600 pence a therm in August, so prices have come down since then. One of the problems is many of the companies forward hedged and we are still looking at a price of 300-odd pence a therm into March 2023. There will not, therefore, be an immediate reduction in price, but the stabilisation of pricing is important. There is much work going on at Commission level to try to decouple gas from the cost of electricity and to create new systems, which will help the EU situation. Our situation is a bit different insofar as we have the relationship with the UK in respect of the importation of gas.

I take the Deputy's point and I replied earlier to Deputy Cian O'Callaghan on mitigation for those on community heating schemes.

Ireland has responded to a remarkable degree on the refugee crisis. More than 60,000 Ukrainians have come to Ireland and the numbers coming in separately from international protection have more than doubled when compared with last year. These were numbers simply not envisaged towards the end of last year and before the war.

Deputy Paul Murphy raised the judgments on CETA. I will examine those in detail. Quite a number of judges made their opinions known. I am sure the Deputy will agree CETA has been beneficial to many companies in Ireland and to many jobs. It has been in operation since 2017. Approximately 400 companies that are client companies of Enterprise Ireland are involved in exporting and are in the market in Canada. A lot of our produce is exported to Canada. It is a country we have good relationships with in the context of the rules-based international order. All that needs to be said because it rarely gets said by those who take an opposing view on CETA.

The Deputy raised the issue of nationalisation of the Corrib field and what could happen. We must act in good faith with companies that invest in Ireland. The Deputy's approach would destroy foreign direct investment in Ireland, if a future Government just willfully nationalised someone who decided to invest in Ireland. Governments here do not have the wherewithal to speculate on fossil fuels, nor will we have it in the future. Where companies invest here they need to have that security that we have an international rules-based system, that there are no sudden shocks and that it is not the case you can invest in Ireland and then suddenly the Government takes a turn and says it is going to nationalise everything you have. That would lead to a banana republic very quickly. It would undermine foreign direct investment. Maybe that is something the Deputy wants because maybe he does not agree with multinationals coming into Ireland.

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