Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the Minister of State. It is good to have him and his colleagues from the Department here. It is reassuring for all of us. In these Houses we have great respect for the Department of foreign affairs. We respect very much the work done by Irish Aid and in support of our diaspora. The influence that 72 million people worldwide have on behalf of Ireland internationally is quite enormous. It is absolutely essential that we continue to have engagement and that we continue to support those members of our diaspora who are in difficulty at any time. It is reassuring for us also to know that there is somebody of deep commitment and ability in the Department. One thing I noticed in my previous job of nearly nine years was the calibre of the people who work for the Department of foreign affairs, both here and abroad. They have enormous commitment to service to the nation and to representing the best of what it is to be Irish at home and abroad. The departmental teams, whether the diplomats or others who work for us, are the unsung heroes of modern Ireland.

We talk about the current geopolitical situation and say it is complex. In some ways it is not very complex at all. What is happening is Putin is slaughtering people in Ukraine and the response of several governments has been to increase their expenditure on defence in order to counter that and prepare for any future offensives that may occur. The consequences of that are the deaths of many thousands of other people in the most deprived parts of the world. I have to ask the following question. Are governments that make that decision so morally bereft that the entirety of the cutbacks that are necessary to fund defence should be focused on their development aid budgets? That is not right. It is not right that the most vulnerable, who have absolutely no responsibility for what is happening in Ukraine and what is being done by the monster that is Putin, would carry the cost of that.

The second thing that occurs to me to be of enormous importance is the actions of Trump. I refer to the executive order he made ceasing the operation of USAID, which works in partnership with many Irish NGOs and international organisations. I do not see much point in attempting to negotiate with the Trump regime. They want to head in one direction today, and tomorrow they will change completely and will go somewhere else. Surely our appeal here has to be to the Irish in America.

God knows the Israeli people are turning to their friends in America to ask them to exert their influence. Surely we can ask Irish Americans to exert their influence to prevent the degradation of the American aid support programme, exacerbated by the US's decision to leave the WHO, wherein it was also doing valuable work.

Then we look at Germany and a reduction of €2 billion in funding since 2023, and France and a €1.8 billion reduction, and so on right across many countries in Europe. We need to appeal to our friends not to turn their backs on the most vulnerable.

Finally, I refer to the travesty in Gaza. We cannot continue just to talk about this situation; there needs to be action. When we see convoys of aid massing on the border or at short distances from the border, why can we not do more to insist that the UN go in and support aid convoys along safe corridors into the Gaza Strip and to the West Bank? Why can we not in Europe, for example, organise, as has been suggested, air drops of aid into the territory? Everything that can be done must be done, and we have to move beyond the impressive diplomacy to real and meaningful action.