Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I endorse the sympathy expressed by everybody in the House to the French people following the atrocity inflicted on them last Friday and express my sympathy to the ambassador and those present in the Visitors Gallery. I ask them to take home with them the sympathy of everybody in Ireland. Many of us in this House are Francophiles and visit France every year, perhaps many times a year.

To some extent they will understand that this is seen by us not just as an attack on France, but also on Ireland and on those who feel for France and feel a common bond with it. It is something we will join with France in any way we can in combating. It is probably indicative of what happened and what will happen in the future that words of sympathy are not enough. Much of what has been said today is, understandably, rhetoric and not a proposal of concrete measures to combat what happened last Friday. This is not a criticism of anybody in Government, but is a reflection of the fact that we feel helpless in this situation. So much of what has been said has been sympathetic and so much has shown a great deal of determination, but little has been said and there is little I can say that will contribute to producing a solution to this awful problem which raised its ugly head last Friday.

The French response to what happened is understandable and was indeed inevitable. Does it not emphasise the extreme cowardice of those who committed this atrocity that not only were they prepared to shoot in cold blood - French citizens and citizens of other countries indiscriminately - they must have known the result of what they were doing would be a French response of the sort we have seen in the past two days which would result in the death of innocent people - children, adults, grandparents and people not involved - in Raqqa and other places? They did not care. They did not care not only that the targets of their barbarity would die, but that other people to whom they might be closer and other innocent people in parts of Syria would die as well. That is the type of depravity we face. This is something that is completely incomprehensible to people who hold the values the Taoiseach, Deputy Martin and others have expressed so eloquently today.

I do not believe we should, nor do I believe we have any intention of doing it, respond to this barbarity with barbarity. We are dumbstruck and feel helpless at the moment. However, the fact the US Secretary of State has travelled to Paris is a show not of strength, as military solutions in these situations are very difficult if not impossible, but of burying minor differences that occur from time to time in international relationships in the face of a common threat that must be opposed.

Finally, I welcome the fact that when awful occasions like this occur, the differences we in this House manage to find are buried as insignificant in the face of what has been happening in France in the past few days.

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