Foreign Conflicts
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-05
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Neale Richmond (FG), Dublin Rathdown

It is a very serious proposition by the Deputy that needs to be dealt with quite delicately. In December of last year, the EU widened the scope of sanctions against Belarus in response to hybrid activities affecting EU member states. That decision was not taken lightly. While, of course, we welcome the release of political prisoners by Belarus and we are very grateful to the role of the US Administration, we have yet to see evidence of a change of policy in Belarus. In addition to its violations of human rights and the rule of law, and its absolute complicity in Russia's ongoing illegal full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the regime's hybrid activity directed towards the EU continues to increase in scale. We have strongly condemned the large-scale incursions into Lithuanian airspace from Belarus. We will continue to work closely with EU partners to examine options for further actions to respond to Belarus's persistent and provocative hybrid activities. That means engaging directly with the regime is extremely difficult. I say that quite frankly. I take with great sincerity the interventions by the released political prisoners. We engage with those former prisoners as an Irish Government at a political and an official level as well as, crucially, at a European level. Some of our own European political affiliations and networks do so as well. We will take their views and their opinions into account but we also have to respond to the actuality and the hybrid incursions were actualities. It is a fact that Belarus is tied at the hip with Russia when it comes to the Russian atrocities in Ukraine. We have to bear all that into account and perhaps tread carefully when it comes to the suggestion or the request to engage directly.

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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