Senator Gerard Craughwell- speech from 22 Feb 2022

Leader, I first want to remark on the fact that we had the Uyghur community in here today in Leinster House and it is a testament to this House that it is not afraid to bring forward people from any community anywhere in the world that are being subjected to horrendous treatment and bring them here and recognise them. I also want to welcome the Lord Mayor of Cork, a pleasure always to see you in the House. Leader, I know that you have an interest in issues relating to aviation and you must be aware of the change in the law that came in January 1st as a result of a European directive regarding security clearance for people working at airports. The Garda vetting system is breaking down. The employers do not know who to contact. They do not know how to expedite people that are brought in for clearance. The clearance is now presumably investigating the backgrounds of family members as well as the individual themselves. There is some suggestion that people coming from overseas can be gathered much faster than Indigenous Irish. So this is something that we need to look into fairly urgently. A lot of talk about Ireland's seat on the United Nations Security Council and how we won it. There is an article in today's paper, we won it with 945 pairs of socks, we won it with umbrellas, we won it with badges and we won it with notebooks. It's 125,000 euros of our hard earned taxes used to, I suppose, bring on side the diplomats who would be voting. I think it's repugnant to everything the United Nations stands for that these competitions should take place on an annual basis for a seat which actually rotates every 20 years anyway. And I just think there is something terribly wrong in a world that is full of inequality and hunger that we would be throwing out socks and umbrellas and fancy notebooks in order to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council. I think it's horrendous. Moving swiftly along to Ukraine, what is happening in the Ukraine today, Mr Putin's suggestion that he would move into eastern Ukraine in a peacekeeping role. There is only one organisation in this world that can decide on peacekeeping and that is the United Nations. And if Mr Putin is that afraid of the possibilities of problems in eastern Ukraine, then what he needs to do is to bring it to the United Nations Security Council and let them pick a peacekeeping nation that will look after the needs of the people in eastern Ukraine. I've been engaging with the Ukrainian ambassador and her staff over the last few days and my heart goes out to them today. They are miles from home and at the end of the day, they have no idea what's going to happen over the next 24, 48 hours. We saw that in the incursions into Georgia, there was absolutely no support. We can't allow that to happen in Ukraine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.