Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 July 2025
Committee on Defence and National Security
General Scheme of the Defence (Amendment) Bill 2025: Discussion (Resumed)
2:00 am
Ms Lynn Boylan:
I echo what Mr. Andrews is saying in one sense, in that if we want to stop innocent Palestinians being slaughtered in their thousands, we must stop arming Israel and we must sanction it. Unfortunately, that is not happening at a European level. We saw only last week that the European Council again failed to reach a decision to take any action against Israel. That is why we must reinforce the fact that Ireland is a neutral state and that we can separate and draw a distinction between ourselves and countries such as Germany and Austria, which are wholeheartedly arming and supplying the weapons that are slaughtering innocent Palestinian children.
We also have a Commissioner, Kaja Kallas, who initially when the humanitarian blockade began, said that she would work with Israel to find an alternative source of humanitarian aid. She backtracked on that but, again, she was willing to endorse the Gaza humanitarian fund, where again we are seeing innocent civilians being slaughtered.
It is therefore important for Ireland to be able to distinguish ourselves from the EU when necessary such as, for example, when we cannot stand over the inaction of the European Union and its arming, supplying and enabling Israel to act with impunity, while, as Mr. Andrews said correctly, we were very swift to apply sanctions to Russia.