Paul Murphy Demands Debt Relief for Ukraine Now

Thanks a lot. It sounds like a discussion about solidarity with Ukraine took up a fair amount of time with the discussion with the Prime Minister. Can I ask in that context whether you spoke about the crucial issue of debt relief for Ukraine, or are you, is Prime Minister Russia, happy for money to continue to flood out of Ukraine to pay for unsustainable and odious debts? Debt repayments this year are 6 billion euros more than the total education budget of Ukraine. 2.5 billion of that is owed to the IMF alone, the biggest holder of Ukrainian debt. And the truth is, because of the crisis, as a consequence of the horrendous, brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian debt is growing. It has already grown by over 5 billion euros this year. Surely it does not make sense to, on the one hand, have a Marshall Plan for Ukraine, and we are in favour of investment to help the reconstruction of Ukraine, but at the same time to continue to say that the odious, illegitimate debts that are the consequence of the oligarchisation of Ukrainian society, for that to continue to be paid, to give with one hand and then to take back with the other. Surely we need to have immediate debt relief, debt cancellation for the Ukrainian people. Thank you. Thank you. Tisha, five and a half minutes. First of all, I think Deputy Neil Richmond raised the issue of financial supports. There are two elements to this. There is the current financial crisis facing Ukraine. I met with President Zelenskyy, forced to visit Kyiv, just received a letter back from President Zelenskyy thanking Ireland and me personally for supporting the historic decision of the European Council of June 23 to grant Ukraine the official status of a candidate to country for membership of the European Union. So he has written to us articulating his gratitude to Ireland for our proactive support. The current support, like the EU leaders have agreed now to support Ukraine via exceptional macro financial assistance of up to nine billion in 2022. But that is to try and enable them to deal with current budgetary issues. Then there is a further issue around the reconstruction of Ukraine post the war or parallel with the war continuing. That conference took place in Lugana, the Ukraine Recovery Conference. Mr. Sean Fleming represented Ireland. We joined the Lugana Declaration, which sets out seven principles to guide Ukraine's recovery process. And the Ukraine-led draft of the recovery development plan presented recently in Lugana is the overarching framework guiding the recovery process, allowing for coordinated multi-stakeholder participation in partnerships. We have contributed towards non-lethal elements of the European peace facility, bringing our total support up to about 44 million of the overall two billion in support provided under the four packages. We have provided 20 million further in humanitarian aid and also medical assistance and supplies of 4.3 million. Some of that covers what Deputy Murphy raised also. But the broader issue is, of course, when I spoke with President Zelensky, we discussed the economy and the finances. They have had a 50 percent reduction in GDP. Their economy is in crisis because of the war. And therefore, there's a number of strategies that have to be deployed. It's not a simple matter of just waiving debt. That's not the way these issues are resolved. And he has been – the Prime Minister, Denise Shemel, who I also met, has met with the IMF – in developing a structured approach, not just to the current budgetary issues, to keep paying civil servants, keep everybody going, but also the reconstruction of Ukraine. In terms of Deputy Hawi's points on the conference on the future of Europe around the treaty change, I would keep an open view. You're correct, it's going to be very challenging to have treaty change or to get agreement among 27 and treaty change. I support the idea of making public health a shared competence, given our experiences from COVID-19, the procurement of vaccines at the European Union level, the establishment of the Hira Institute, the need to upgrade the ECDC. There's a lot of lessons we should learn from COVID at the European level. And what really the big difference between the approach to COVID compared to the European Union's approach to SARS back in the early 2000s when I was a Minister for Health is unbelievably in terms of the scale of the coordination this time around compared to that time. And I think it worked. And I think it worked. So we need to be open-minded about that in terms of treaty change. So we should keep an open mind. Obviously, to get treaty change is a huge challenge in itself. And we will keep the House informed in terms of the development of the detailed analysis by our own Government and the Department of Foreign Affairs in respect of the recommendations of the conference on the future of Europe. And Minister Thomas Byrne is actively working on that. In terms of rent controls, we have rent controls, Deputy. Ireland has rent controls. We have an RPZs, 2%. And that is a fact. And if you look at the data, it shows that they are working in respect of existing houses. And you know that. By the way, I did speak to Mark Rutte about housing. They have huge challenges in housing, enormous challenges in housing. And they have to build at even a greater scale than we have to build or are building. So they have huge issues around housing. There is not a country I meet, by the way, that doesn't have issues around housing, particularly in their cities and so forth. And so they are not as exactly in a benign situation compared to us as you would suggest. And ultimately, I dealt with most of what Deputy Murphy raised. And the overall story really is that Ukraine's application to join the European Union, I think, does open the door for substantial funding by the European Union for Ukraine. And indeed, for the world, more generally, other countries coming together, particularly in the Lugana Conference, committing and pledging to support the reconstruction of Ukraine, given the extraordinary devastation that's been wreaked by Russia and by Vladimir Putin's government. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Stay shook. Thank you very much. Stay shook.