Joe McHugh (Donegal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to acknowledge the accession status of Georgia. We have to be very vigilant because Russian aggression has not stopped. My colleague, Deputy Ó Murchú and I were out near South Ossetia. There was an innocent man killed by the Russian army while he was going to church on 6 November. We are pushing, supporting and encouraging democracy in Georgia, and that is the pathway and the journey the Georgians have been on. I want to acknowledge the Georgian ambassador, who has been working tirelessly. I think every Deputy, including the Ceann Comhairle, knows him personally at this stage. He and his colleagues have been working so hard on this and it is important to acknowledge that. I call on the Dáil and the Seanad to continue with their support.

The European Economic Community was set up as a peace project to reduce tensions and to, as much as possible, avoid war. At this time, when we see what is going on in the Middle East, the European Union, as it is now, has a role. It will require courage. We have only to look at our own country, our recent history, our own journey and pathway to peace. We know and understand what happens if there is no peace. There is tension, war, retaliation, hatred and intergenerational bitterness that carries on. What I call for today, ahead of any future EU meetings, is to instil a level of confidence in an already eroded democratic system where people have lost faith in democracy. This is an opportunity for the EU to take a stand. I acknowledge the Minister of State, Deputy Burke's own work, the Tánaiste's work in the Department of Foreign Affairs, and the Taoiseach's efforts as well, to try to bring some solution to the current nightmare in the Middle East. It is an absolute nightmare, where innocent people on the Israeli side were murdered and maimed, and where today, innocent people in Palestine - men, women and children - have also been killed.

We have to ensure that we have hope because the opposite of hope is despair. I have been listening to people, especially young people. I have visited a number of schools recently as well. There is a despair with regard to what is going on globally, and what is going on in Russia and its aggressive invasion of Ukraine. It is something that we have to grasp very seriously and ensure that we use all the machinery and mechanics of all the different institutions we have at a European Union level. Sometimes all of those institutions and that massive bureaucracy we have in Brussels and Strasbourg can be seen as a bureaucracy where people stand around talking all day, pushing for different and specific issues not related to the bigger issues. The bigger issue is peace. It will require courage and very bold intervention by the European Union. We had it in our own country with very courageous men such as David Trimble and John Hume, who took very courageous and bold positions but they brought peace. We know the benefits and rewards of peace. We know that the bitterness is intergenerational but, at the same time, we are looking at a new generation coming up in this country, where they do not have war or feuding, and they do not have to see the tensions, retaliations and bitterness that we faced when we were growing up.

My message today is that whatever we can do at a European level, we have to intervene very courageously and boldly to instil the confidence that is needed in the democratic process. At the end of the day, the EU stands on the shoulders of giants who worked together courageously to build a peace project and to avoid to the tensions and potential of war. Here we have Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia with candidate status. They are in a very unique position to promote peace and democracy and to strengthen democracy. The European Union has a very important role to play in the Middle East because what will happen in the aftermath of what has gone over the past month will be that the bitterness and the tensions will continue, and then we will be into all sorts of problems for the next generation. We have to find a solution, and the only way we can find that solution is diplomatically.

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