Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The images from Ukraine are quite shocking. I never thought we would be in a position where one neighbour would invade another's territorial borders in a modern Europe in 2022 in the way we have seen happen in Ukraine. As I said on the Order of Business the other day, there is a view that it appears to be the greatest act of aggression since the Second World War; it is not. It is worth remembering that in the 1990s we saw the breakdown of Yugoslavia and 100,000 of our fellow European citizens and other people on the border slaughtered. We also saw 8,000 people, primarily men, slaughtered in Srebrenica while UN peacekeepers stood aside. This is not as shocking an anomaly as it seems.

We also saw Russian aggression, including foreign policy aggression, in an intervention in Syria in 2015 to the extent that it turned the war around for Bashar al-Assad. Russian foreign policy aggression is happening not just in Europe but elsewhere, something that has been very evident to a lot of people over the past couple of years. We have seen the rise of Serb nationalism once again, backed by the Russians. Russia has made the argument for the annexation of Crimea and Donbas but, at the same time Kosovo, one of the youngest countries in the world, has not been recognised. That is the context we are in. This is not to engage in whataboutery, but the current situation is a consequence of Russian aggression that has been building up over the past number of years. It is worth putting that in that context.

The unlawful and wholly unwarranted invasion of a sovereign nation by the Russian Federation demands an unprecedented international response. We are at long last seeing significant financial sanctions being imposed by the EU on Russia. I agree that we also need a co-ordinated European response from other countries regarding expelling Russian ambassadors. That should not just be done in an Irish context; it needs to be done on a co-ordinated basis.

Ireland must show, even in its neutral stance, that we believe in a strong international law and human rights-led approach to these issues. We must show that we are willing to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine. I very much welcome the statement from the Minister for Justice that she will waive visas for people coming from Ukraine or Ukrainian nationals, but we need to go further. People are fleeing and have refugee status, but are not necessarily Ukrainian nationals. They are living in Ukraine and suffering the consequences of this war but they are being stopped and turned away at borders. We need to extend the measures for Ukrainians to anyone living in Ukraine.

We also need to make sure that we are accepting national ID cards. Many people do not have, or have not been able to access, passports but in Ukraine people are used to using national ID cards. We need to bring them along.

The Minister knows that the Government has been working particularly hard with people who have arranged international surrogacy in Ukraine, but I have been quite distressed to read some of the newspaper reports over the past number of days that did not mention the women in Ukraine who have given birth to those children or those who are pregnant or are having transfers in the middle of a war. Ireland needs to have an arrangement whereby someone who has arranged surrogacy with an Irish family can be flown to Ireland and have medical bills guaranteed, maternal healthcare and living expenses over here. We need to go further.

The Ukrainian currency is worthless at the borders where people are fleeing. People are on the borders of Moldova, Romania, Poland and Hungary. We need to make sure that we are shoring up the Ukrainian currency so that people who are leaving with cash in their pockets can use that money at the borders. We can do many things to help and stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine that require very little effort from us. We will be taking part in international efforts, but we need to welcome people from Ukraine to this country, and not just waive visas but go much further.

I welcome this debate. We will have this debate for a number of weeks and months and, if places like Syria are anything to go by, we will be having this debate for years to come. We need to make sure that the eyes of the world are not just on Ukraine over the couple of weeks but over the next couple of years because ignoring Russian foreign policy aggression over the past ten to 15 years has gotten us to where we are today.