Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will start by responding to Senator Ardagh. She mentioned the terrible attack on Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell in Omagh. As I have said in the Dáil, it was a shocking and brutal attack on a man who has given so much in his capacity as a PSNI detective but also as a citizen of Northern Ireland who coached an underage team. He gave the very best of himself to society, and for him to be so savagely attacked in a cowardly way, and in front of young people, shocked everybody.

The attack underlines and underpins the necessity of taking the narrative of the gun out of Irish politics once and for all. It is plausible that the people who carried out the attack were hardly born 25 years ago when we signed the Good Friday Agreement, yet they seem to have this narrative due to whatever warped views they have of the world or how the island should be constructed, and therefore they believe they can shoot and attempt to kill people at will. The degree to which violence is glorified or there is triumphalism is an issue that needs to be discussed on another day. We need to be careful to take out that narrative for younger generations coming up. The attack was shocking.

Senator Ardagh commented about the plight of women and girls in many areas around the world and war-torn areas, and Deputy Clarke raised this issue as well. Ireland has been one of the countries to the fore in highlighting the gender issue, and gender in conflict in particular. The issue was a key theme of Ireland's two years on the Security Council. We were the first country in a long time at the Security Council to bring civilian actors to the council to present to it about the role of women in peace processes in conflict situations and the experience of women in conflict areas. In the first year of our attendance at the UN General Assembly meeting, we, along with the European Union, participated in the joint forum on women in conflict, and I pay tribute to our leadership on that occasion, but also asked women who were senior players in conflict, such as in Colombia and Afghanistan, to come before the council. That was a novel and innovative approach taken by the Irish team and decided upon by Ireland.

Senator Ardagh said she felt the war in Ukraine dominated our period on the Security Council but we did not allow that to happen. We had a thematic approach to our role and one of the key themes was gender and the protection of women and girls. I agree with the Senator that, across the world, gender equality is a big issue for us. We have seen a very significant manifestation of the deprivation of basic human rights in respect of women and girls. Most recently, at the Foreign Affairs Council meeting, we discussed the situation in Afghanistan with Amina Mohammed, who is the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. As I said earlier, that brought home the challenges we face. What is happening to women and girls in Afghanistan is quite simply appalling and shocking. They have been abandoned in many respects. The Taliban is depriving and prohibiting women and girls from participating in the most basic daily activities of life. More worrying, the Taliban has now placed impositions on the participation by women and girls in NGOs, for example, which distribute humanitarian aid. For me, it is not a dilemma because I am very clear headed that we have to get in there and continue to support women and girls and people in Afghanistan on a humanitarian and basic needs basis, notwithstanding the policies of the Taliban and their attitudes to women and girls.

Ms Amina Mohammed made a very powerful presentation. Not all member states share the same view. There are different perspectives on the degree of supports we give and balancing that against sanctioning the regime for its behaviour. It is a very challenging line. I was struck by the view Ms Mohammed expressed that we should continue to invest in primary education. There are areas where we can still carry out targeted resources for women and girls in Afghanistan. One area is primary education because it will help to protect against further radicalisation in the future and give people at least the possibility, opportunity and curiosity that education brings with it. That is crucial. We also learned there can be different realities on the ground in different provinces in Afghanistan, so we should not lose hope and I pay tribute to the UN. It is one of the brighter sparks of the meetings I have seen so far. I would have entered the meeting almost with a sense of hopelessness in terms of what can we do in Afghanistan, but I came out of the meeting feeling there is a lot to get stuck into. Regarding the leadership of the UN and other organisations in Afghanistan, such as the World Food Programme, where an Irishwoman is very involved, we need to continue to support those kinds of endeavours in respect of women and girls.

To Deputy Clarke, securing gender equality is a key theme of everything Ireland does in international forums and we have been particularly strong in that regard. We actively promote gender equality in all of the multilateral forums in which we are involved, through debates, resolutions and statements, including at the United Nations Human Rights Council, which I did yesterday, the Commission on the Status of Women, and the third committee of the UN General Assembly. We especially promote sexual reproductive health rights in multilateral forums. That has been a strong position for Ireland. We provide core funding to the UNESCO-UNAIDS joint programme, which is called Our Rights, Our Lives, Our Future. The programme targets 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa with support for quality, comprehensive sexuality education.

We also champion work on gender equality in multilateral forums outside of the United Nations. For example, our Presidency of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe in 2022 included a focus on countering domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. A ministerial conference was held on the subject in 2022, which culminated in 38 member states signing a new Dublin Declaration committing to tackling substantively violence against women and girls across the Continent.

Rest assured that is a key thematic approach from Ireland in almost all forums we are part of. We will be involved in this year's meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, which will take place from 6 to 17 March under the theme of innovation and technological change in education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy Roderic O'Gorman, will lead Ireland's delegation. Ireland is a core funder of UNFPA, which is the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency. Ireland has a very strong agenda on these issues.

To address Senator Ardagh's point, I do not detect any peace track at the moment. Unfortunately, we do not see any light on the horizon for the cessation of the war in Ukraine. It is a very worrying situation because of the scale and level of violence.

The European Commission remains impressed by the capacity of the Ukrainian Government to respond to the documentation it receives from the Commission in respect of its application to join. The process is at an early stage by any yardstick, but I think it is fair to say the Ukrainian application is making the strongest progress.

We discussed the situation pertaining to Moldova again recently. It is in a very vulnerable situation. The Moldovan foreign minister has retained his position and we had him back in at the last meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council. He gave an upbeat assessment of the situation but also gave a sense of the huge pressures they are under because of the proximity of Russian pressures and forces. This underlines the need for us to be strong in providing additional supports to Moldova, in particular.

I would add that Georgia has a bit more work to do. There is a need for more reforms within Georgia in respect of the European perspective.