Mark Wall (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I join in condemning the attack on the PSNI officer last night. It is horrific to even contemplate that his son witnessed the attack and that there were so many young people there. As has been said by my two colleagues, that message needs to go out loud and strong. We can never go back. Anyone who has information needs to bring that to the relevant authorities.

I also want to support the call from Senator Lombard, not for the first time, for a debate on our Defence Forces. Senator Lombard outlined the issues regarding our Reserve Defence Force and indeed our permanent Defence Forces. We need to debate the commission report. It has been sitting on a shelf for a number of months. There are issues with it. If the Deputy Leader could organise that, it would be welcomed by a number of Members.

I also want to mark the fact that it is a year since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Putin-led Russian state today. It has been a year of senseless brutal violence unleashed by one country upon another, a year of displacement and loss for millions of ordinary Ukrainians but also a year in which the Ukrainian spirit of defiance and resistance to Putin's army has pierced the illusion of Russian military superiority. It is important to remember, as we mark this terrible anniversary, that the attempt to once again rewrite Europe's borders with brutal violence has been ongoing for close to a decade. It has been a decade in which peace and diplomacy between states has been casually and consistently disregarded by one of the world's few nuclear armed powers in an attempt to crush a smaller neighbour into national disarmament. It is not the plight of the nation of Ukraine that moves us so much as the awful suffering of its people. The ongoing investigation by the International Criminal Court into possible war crimes in Ukraine goes back as far as November 2013, when the anti-government protests began that would later be used as a pretext for the illegal and unjustified invasion of Crimea. The question remains how many innocent people have suffered in that time, how many lives have been cut short and how many families torn apart and communities broken in the past decade and especially in the past 12 months due to one powerful state deciding it had a right to invade its neighbour. Perhaps we will never know the full account of the suffering and pain but today it is right to acknowledge and condemn this illegal invasion.Of course, we must now deal with the worst refugee crisis in Europe since the Second World War, which is happening right before our eyes. More than 8 million Ukrainians have been forced to leave their country and seek refuge elsewhere. We have seen them, we have met them and we have heard their stories. Many people have opened their doors and welcomed them into their communities. Some people have, regrettably, stoked division in the face of need. It is clear from the Le Chéile march held last weekend, which saw thousands of people take to the streets in support of a compassionate, welcoming policy towards those fleeing violence in Ukraine and elsewhere, that the majority view in this country is one of solidarity with refugees.