“Your struggle is our struggle. Your success will be our success. We are with you for as long as it takes,” the Taoiseach told Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
In the courtyard of Government Buildings for a sombre and sincere press conference, on the floor of a packed Dáil chamber for a historic address to the Houses of the Oireachtas, and even in the cursive writing of the message Mr Zelenskiy left in the Áras an Uachtaráin visitors’ book, the politics of a world at war visited every element of the national politics of Ireland for one very short day.
In his remarks at a joint press conference with Mr Zelenskiy yesterday, Micheál Martin assumed the role of the leader of a country that was preparing to take on the presidency of the Council of the European Union. As our lead story reports this morning, Mr Martin said, while standing next to the Ukrainian president, that Ireland would be using its six months in the influential presidency role next year to “accelerate the enlargement agenda”, and support Ukraine’s full membership of the bloc.
Later on in his joint address to both Houses of the Oireachtas, Mr Zelenskiy would receive a round of applause from TDs and Senators when he told them that Ukraine wanted to stand alongside its European allies as an equal. “Europe cannot run away from its own values,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
This was an alliance between one leader of a wartime country, and one leader of a neutral country. “Ireland is a neutral country, but it is certainly not an indifferent country. We’re grateful to it,” Mr Zelenskiy said. The theme of the day was that Ukraine has been left to suffer under the profound burden of defending all of Europe from attack. And Ireland’s neutrality was described as more of an active force for good, rather than a passive privilege. Mr Zelenskiy had nodded in agreement when Mr Martin described Russia’s 2022 invasion as a “brutal and illegal war”, and the Ukrainian president would later appeal to Irish parliamentarians to continue to use such language to call out the aggressor in this war.
The Ukrainian president identified Ireland’s global soft power as a mechanism for ensuring a dignified peace for Ukraine. “Just as there is no capital in the world unaware of what St. Patrick’s Day is, there should be no capital that does not know that the Irish together with the Ukrainians and many other nations are united for real peace – a peace without humiliation and based on something truly real, on shared values.”
Ireland, he said, was one of the few countries that understands the price of freedom. Peace “without humiliation” means a form of peace that will recognise and respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and identity, something that is not guaranteed by the ongoing negotiations between Washington and Moscow. The sweet solidarity that consumed Leinster House yesterday was contrasted by the bitter reality of what was emerging from discussions between Vladimir Putin and US special envoy Steve Witkoff at the Kremlin on the same day, with the Russian president saying after the apparently fruitless five-hour discussion that he was “ready” for war with Europe.
As Pat Leahy has written in his analysis piece, the historic visit to Ireland has come at a determining time for Ukraine. “Real peace may involve recognising the brutal reality that the parts of Ukraine conquered by Russia are unlikely to be reconquered by Ukraine in the near future, however unjust that may be,” Pat writes.
And in her piece, Miriam Lord notes how the mood in Leinster House was notably different from Mr Zelenskiy’s first video address in 2022, when the shock of the invasion was more raw but when the hope for peace may have been higher. Almost four years on now, having witnessed the scale of Russia’s aggression, Miriam writes how “this time, they didn’t hang out their brightest colours. The time for tears has passed too.”
While Ireland was yesterday arrested by the existential threat Ukraine faces, and the now dire need to secure peace, in places like Dnipro life relentlessly goes on – even in wartime conditions. Daniel McLaughlin has a piece in the paper today about the “low-key but efficient drone workshops that have sprung up all over Ukraine”.
“There were five of us on the project to start with in 2022 and now we have well over 100 workers ... and we make thousands of drones a year,” says Dmytro Panchenko, a co-founder of Dnipro-based drone builder Chaklun (Wizard).
Building expectations
The new infrastructure plan is now bearing the weight of so many senior politicians’ expectations, one might wonder if Ministers are at risk of ascribing the qualities of Lourdes water to it. The report of the accelerating infrastructure taskforce, that was approved by Cabinet yesterday, will be launched by senior politicians including Jack Chambers and Simon Harris this morning. Pat Leahy is writing about some of the details within it in a piece on the front page today.
There is a common political trope in many western countries, where ordinary people believe that their nation alone is uniquely unable to plan or deliver big, important infrastructure projects on time and under budget. If and when a big project does get off the ground, everyone wearily assumes it will inevitably become some infamous boondoggle. What is unusual about Ireland is that it seems that the people that we have in power here have started to enthusiastically subscribe to the same jaded idea.
Because the mood music from Ministers for most of this year, if not longer, is that big ‘B’ Bureaucracy is what ails so much of this country – from water and electricity infrastructure to the desperately needed provision of large housing projects, that building things is just too hard and takes too long. It has been made clear to us again and again that Ministers believe that the new infrastructure plan, with the express aim of cutting red tape and speeding things up, will be how this coalition Government succeeds in the minds of the public.
A cynic might argue that this is a seductive argument for a Government that includes two parties that have been in power for a long time now, and that seems to be laying the blame for the social and political issues of this nation at the door of everyone else except itself. Which is why it’s interesting that Pat is reporting this morning that the new report includes “an implementation plan which is broken down into specific actions by government departments and public bodies, to be achieved by specific deadlines, many of them next year”.
“While each action will be primarily the responsibility of the individual department or agency, the report also clearly identifies that the minister and secretary general of the relevant departments are ‘fully responsible for the implementation of the action’.”
So we may not have to wait long to see if this particular Lourdes miracle works out for the faithful, hopeful Government.
Taxing times for Gerry Hutch
Speaking of religion, a certain monk is once again conspicuous in his presence in the newspaper today. Ahead of the Dublin Central byelection next year, Conor Lally is reporting that “the Government is moving to tighten laws for elected representatives after it emerged the legal obligation for newly elected TDs to produce a tax-clearance certificate is not strong enough to prevent veteran criminal Gerry Hutch from running in an upcoming byelection and taking his Dáil seat, should he win.”
Mr Hutch, who almost won a seat in the same constituency in last year’s general election, owes almost €800,000 to the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Revenue Commissioners. There had been a question about whether or not Mr Hutch would be able to take a seat in the Dáil without his tax affairs being in order, should he still be nursing any electoral ambitions.
While TDs are required by Sipo to provide a tax-clearance certificate on taking up a seat in the Dáil, this rule isn’t actually backed by enforcement power or sanctions. This is a loophole that the Government now seems to be trying to close.
Best Reads
Miriam Lord brings you as close as possible to the sombre pomp of yesterday’s historic visit from a wartime Ukrainian president
Michael McDowell is writing about the now-aborted effort to rename Herzog Park, which brought Ireland to international attention amid accusations of anti-Semitism
And in something very different, Róisín Ingle is pondering, in a surprisingly cheerful way, the “anti-birthday” of the death day, which is one day coming for each and all of us
Playbook
The Dáil kicks off at 9am, with topical issues.
The rest of the schedule looks like this:
10.00am Private Members’ Business, which this morning is a Labour Party motion on healthcare for transgender people
12.00pm Leaders’ Questions
12:34pm Other Members’ Questions
12:42pm Questions on Policy or Legislation
1:12pm Taoiseach’s Questions
1.57pm SOS
2:57pm Government Business, which is statements on Energy Costs
5:12pm Followed by another Government business slot, for statements on the Housing Plan
7:37pm Another slot for a Government Bill, in the report and final stages of the National Training Fund (Amendment) Bill 2025
8:37pm Another Government business slot, for report and final stages of the Social Welfare and Automatic Enrolment Retirement Savings System (Amendment) Bill 2025
10:37pm More Government Business, this time a motion re proposed approval by Dáil Éireann of the Planning and Development Act 2024 (Modifications) Regulations 2025
11.37pm Motions without debate
11.38pm Deferred divisions
00.08am Dáil adjourns
The day ahead in the Seanad looks like this:
10:30am Commencement Matters
12:00pm Order of Business
12:45pm Motion without debate on the Referral to Joint Committee of the Planning and Development (Exempted Development (Act of 2000)) Regulations 2025
12:50pm Government Business, which is committee and remaining stages of the Courts and Civil Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2025
2:30pm Another Government Business slot, this time for committee stage of the Defamation (Amendment) Bill 2024
5:30pm Private Members’ Business is a Sinn Féin motion re Irish Unity
7:30pm Seanad adjourns
