Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ar dtús báire, ba mhaith liom aontú leis na focail atá ráite ag an Leas-Chathaoirleach i dtaobh bás John A. Murphy agus comhbhrón a dhéanamh lena chlann. Tírghráthóir, staraí uasal agus Seanadóir thar barr a bhí ann. Tá brón mór orm go bhfuil sé tar éis bás a fháil. Bhí sé mar chomhshínitheoir mo nomination paper in 2016. Táim an-bhuíoch de as sin.

We are going to make statements on the Ukrainian situation, but we should be adopting a motion. We should be declaring clearly where we stand. Statements are not enough any more. We all know what we would like to state and we all know what we will state in advance, but we must place on the record of this House that we have come to a decision about what has happened and that we are making a declaration, in precise terms, of where we stand on this issue. I am not going to divide the House on the matter but I ask the Leader to consider whether in substitution for statements, we can have a motion that we all agree on and pass, so that the Irish people know where this House stands on the issue.

As Senator Seery Kearney has said, we are dealing with murder on a massive scale. We are dealing with the attempted annihilation of a European democracy. This is happening in our time because we have been blind, in the past, to the emerging Sino-Russian alliance, which has emboldened tyrannies both in Beijing and Moscow to use force and threaten to use force in breach of all international norms. Going back to 1956, I recall Hungarian refugees coming to my house on Leeson Street and selling goods just to survive. I remember the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Members will be glad to know that in 1978, and the other day, I was outside the Russian embassy on Orwell Road, protesting on the tenth anniversary of that event. We must learn one lesson from all of this, which is the following. If the leaders of the Russian people, however that leadership is constituted, want to live in a world where they can do this to other people, they must live in the same world that Brezhnev and others did in 1956 and 1968. They must live in a Cold War world where they have nothing to do with the West, where we cut off all economic ties with them and reduce diplomatic ties to the absolute minimum and where the Russian people bear the brunt of international aggression. We must be ruthless in pursuing that aim. This time, the Russian people must know in their hearts, not what they probably sense in secret, that their leadership has brought them into a barbaric, criminal war and that they must pay the price for that. We must ensure that the people of Ukraine, such of them as will be there in a week's time and so much of Ukraine as a democracy as will exist in a week's time, have not made their sacrifices while the West stood idly by.