Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My colleague, Deputy Ó Snodaigh, had a question down for the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade yesterday.

The reply from the Minister stated: "The Irish government has never taken a position on this issue, believing that it is not in a position to adjudicate on this contentious matter, involving the consideration of a number of legal issues and an assessment of the actions and intentions of many parties during that time." That is an appalling position to adopt. It is denying history and does not help in any way to get an understanding of what happened in Armenia. It is a pathetic answer given that the UN has agreed that what happened meets the criteria of a genocide. As my colleague has said, the European Parliament has passed five motions recognising it as a genocide. A total of 24 countries have officially recognised it as a genocide, including 12 EU countries.

If we do not accept what happened in the past then we cannot learn from the mistakes and move on. Again, Ireland has no problem in recognising the Holocaust as a genocide, the Rwandan genocide or the genocide in Darfur, and rightly so. The question is, why not in Armenia? It is not as if it happened 500 or 1,000 years ago. It happened 100 years ago. There are accurate oral and written accounts of what actually happened. Anyone who reads the evidence at length cannot deny that genocide happened.

Throughout the world victims of genocide ask first for recognition of the crime committed against them. That is usually the process. It is essential as part of the healing process that we discuss it. We need to support them in this recognition. There will be no further trials. The killers got away with the mass murder. It happened 100 years ago. However, I believe it is one of those open wounds that needs to be healed. There needs to be recognition between Armenia and Turkey in respect of what happened. In itself, that would bring those two countries and the whole region closer together. This is positive step that Ireland could take in adopting this resolution.