Foreign Conflicts
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-05
============================================================

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (FF), Kildare South

I compliment the Minister of State on the positive and comprehensive response. I note that on 13 December Belarusian authorities released 123 prisoners following negotiations by the US Administration, which had agreed to lift a sanction on Belarusian potash. The majority of prisoners were sent to Ukraine, and a group of nine sent to Lithuania. Most of those released had been prosecuted and imprisoned for the peaceful exercise of their human rights. One of those released, Maria Kalesnikava, has since given an interview with the Financial Times in which she called for EU engagement with Belarus on the basis that the lack of it only serves to drive Belarus closer to Russia. Another of the released prisoners, Ales Bialiatski, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022, has also called on the EU to enter talks with President Lukashenko. I know the Government and Europe would be walking a tightrope on this particular matter but this suggestion has been made by two influential people who are intimately involved in the situation in Belarus and are advocating greater EU engagement. How does the Minister of State respond to that and what are his thoughts on how Ireland and the EU together might proceed?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-05