EU Meetings
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Thomas Byrne (FF), Meath East

That certainly was mentioned at the meeting of defence ministers, but the meeting was mainly focused on the defence response at the moment. The Minister, Deputy McEntee, at the Foreign Affairs Council and the Taoiseach at the European Council will be discussing that matter in considerable depth this month. There is certainly a lot of discussion about it, but what is important is that we continue to support Ukraine in the meantime. There needs to be peace, but it needs to be a just peace. It needs to be fair to Ukraine. We need to continue to support them in the meantime. For my part, solidarity will be very much in evidence at the General Affairs Council, where the whole issue of enlargement of the European Union will be very high up on the agenda during the Presidency. We will continue to support Ukraine, particularly on the mobilisation of the European Peace Facility support. We are going to continue to engage the Department of Defence. The Defence Forces have provided bilateral support to Ukraine, fully in accordance with our military neutrality and our commitment to providing non-lethal support. That support will continue. We are also contributing to the EU loan that is going to Ukraine, which will partly be used for defence purposes as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09