Departmental Programmes Dail Éireann — 2022-03-01 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central In terms of Deputy Devlin's point of view, I support Ukraine's application to be a member of the European Union. There is a process there but, I believe, it should be a candidate country. I am consistently of the view that the European perspective represents perhaps the most strategic approach that the European Union can take, not only in the eastern neighbourhood but in the Western Balkans as well. It has been too slow, in terms of application processes, for many countries and then Europe complains when Russia and others start meddling in the affairs of the western Balkans, as we saw recently during Covid-19 in terms of the deployment of vaccines for geopolitical objectives which, in itself, is reprehensible. --- 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/2022-03-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:50:12+00:00 Sitting date: 2022-03-01