Senator John McGahon- speech from 3 Mar 2022

Thank you very much. Leader, this entire week I have focused all of my comments on Ukraine. I have talked about how we should grant them immediate accession to the European Union. I have spoken about how we should ensure that if they wish to join NATO that they can do that. I have talked about how I think Ireland's policy of Irish neutrality is ridiculous and how we should be sending weapons to defend women and children who are being murdered on the streets of a European continent. Today the other angle I want to look at it is twofold. First of it is to commend the Russian people who are standing up against Putin. in their own country. God knows how dangerous that is, not only for their livelihoods and their safety, but for their actual lives itself. And I think in this whole debate that that has been forgotten, that this war of attrition, this horrific, horrible war, is not being carried out in the name of normal, decent Russian people. They are abhorrent of this as much as we are, and that it takes real courage to protest against Putin on Russian streets. And people are out doing that, and I think that is very important. to acknowledge. The second point that I want to make is about the sanctions that we are putting forward. We have to absolutely, totally and utterly cripple the Russian economy. All bets have to be off the table. We have to absolutely cripple them. Because once we cripple their economy, we cripple Putin's ability to wage this war, to wage a war of death upon the European continent. So how do we do that? I think we have to ensure that we move swift to include all banks, banks involved in energy. There can be no nitpicking among Western European countries about why we want to impose this sanction, but not this sanction, because it might personally hurt our personal interests. We need total attrition in an economic sense. The point that I would like to raise here is, Mairead McGuinness is leading the charge for the European Union on this, in her position as an EU commissioner for financial stability. She is the woman responsible for introducing these sanctions in Russia. And leader, I think it would be a very good idea if we wrote to Commissioner McGuinness to ask her to come before the Senate at some stage in the next few weeks. I know she is incredibly busy now, but at some stage, to speak to the Senate, to outline what the sanctions are, how the sanctions can work, and what sanctions can act as good deterrence for the future, to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. Thank you.