Paul Coghlan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and thank him for his comprehensive overview. I commend him for his efforts to date and wish him well in his further ongoing constructive efforts.

I had hoped - I communicated with the Leader, Senator Maurice Cummins on the issue - that Syria and Iraq would be included in the debate today, that we would deal with the wider Middle East region. I know that these countries will be dealt with when we return in September, but in Syria alone 170,000 people have been killed, 3 million have fled their country, 9 million have been displaced internally and half of the population are in need of humanitarian aid. In Iraq sectarian tensions are continuously being inflamed. ISIS, with allied Sunni groups, largely controls northern Iraq and the city of Mosul which it captured. This does not in any way take away from the appalling atrocities which have occurred in Gaza and Israel. It goes without saying an absolute priority, as the Minister indicated, is an immediate ceasefire, an end to all violence. We all condemn the upsurge in violence by both sides; it is tit-for-tat and it seems there is no end to it. There has been an especially high number of civilian casualties resulting from-----