Lisa Chambers (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will leave that alone. Senator Warfield also spoke about Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. There was criticism of her actions. My view is that she has cleared that up and there is a particular context for Germany in all of that. That is probably enough said on that as well.

Senator Moynihan asked that No. 127(7) not be taken, which is the motion before the House. I will not be accepting the amendment that was proposed by Senator Moynihan and seconded by Senator Flynn. I want to acknowledge that the situation is changing almost by the hour. There was a view by the majority of Senators in the House that we wanted to have a motion in the House to put our views on the record. We will of course have a more substantive debate tomorrow. We have a two-hour Private Member's slot tomorrow where the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs will be in the House. I organised that on foot of a request from many Members. Most Members in the House will know that outside of the Chamber, there has been considerable effort across parties to try to agree a motion. There are different views on the conflict in the Middle East and that is accepted. The motion as put forward by the Government Senators is balanced. That is my view. It caters to both sides. The reason for the very late amendment this morning was to try to update the motion and amend it to reflect the bombing of the hospital which I would assume most Members would like to see included in the motion; it is a reference to and an utter condemnation of the bombing of that hospital in Gaza. That was the reason for the very late amendment. Events overnight took over. When we circulated the original motion, we did not have that information. We were trying to move as quickly as we could so that the motion the House will take today reflects the updated situation which, as I said, is changing at an alarming pace.

Senator Gavan specifically stated that there was no reference to the 1,000 children who have been killed. That is included in the updated motion.