Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My apologies because I had to attend a meeting of the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications and my slot has had to be rescheduled a couple of times.

I wish to refer to the hijacking of an aircraft. Senator Dooley has briefly mentioned it and I am sure it was mentioned by a number of Senators yesterday. As a member of the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications, I welcome what happened yesterday at the EU Council and the imposition of sanctions on Belarus.

We must, as a Parliament, insist that Mr. Protasevich and his girlfriend are freed in Belarus and provided with safe passage to their original destination of Vilnius that is in a nearby country. It is horrific to think that an aircraft, albeit registered in Poland but owned by Ryanair Holdings which is an Irish-based and headquartered company, was taken down by military jets on the basis of a fake bomb threat. Nothing was found and nothing was proven so the threat was made up. In fact, the plane was far closer to the border than to Minsk yet the pilot was expected to fly to Minsk where not just the journalist and his girlfriend were taken off the plane but three other people mysteriously vanished. We have been told this morning that the three other people are of Russian nationality but I do not know whether that is true.

I ask the Leader to arrange for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to come here and let us know what he is doing in terms of contact with Belarus. Also, I want us, as a Parliament, to ask that the journalist and his girlfriend are released and given free passage to another country where they will be safer.