David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Most of those who spoke this evening started by offering sympathy to the families of those who were murdered in Paris and to the French people. I join in that. This was an appalling atrocity that could have happened anywhere. France was picked, for whatever reason, but it could have happened anywhere, in any capital in Europe or the western world.

I attended an event a couple of weeks ago in Ballinacurra, close to where I live, at which a First World War hero, a soldier named Barrett, was being honoured.

He had been in the First World War in the Somme. He had been machine gunned with all his people, who were gun fodder, and when the Germans came along they would kick the bodies to see if they were alive. If they moved or made any noise, they were shot. He got a ferocious kick but did not make any noise. He managed to crawl back over no-man's land in the blood, the mud and the dark. He came across a young officer who was impaled on barbed wire and managed to drag him with him over the terrain. He got a medal for that.

What I heard over the weekend reminded me of that. Those people went in and fired all over the place with their automatic rifles, reloaded, and then the shooting changed to single shots. They went around to see who was left alive that they could finally execute with the single shots. Deputy Creed mentioned his neighbour and his girlfriend who were there and barely escaped. That is the kind of terror we are talking about - cold-blooded killing and murder. That could happen anywhere.

I maintain that ISIS is a completely evil regime. It operates by pure terror and murder. Deputy O'Dowd mentioned crucifixions, beheadings, dropping people off buildings and so on. It is totally anathema to us. Other colleagues spoke about diplomacy. I would always advocate diplomatic ways of doing business, yet I am not sure ISIS is interested at all in any form of diplomacy or discussion with anybody. Its modus operandi seems to be to terrorize. It uses social media. I know from my work that the various facebooks, twitters and so on are trying to curtail that methodology of spreading the message by monitoring and controlling it and so forth. It is quite important for that to carry on. We should not allow modern technology to do that.

Different colleagues have gone back through history. We could go back as far as the crusades or further to trace this, but I am not sure what the value of that is. We are faced today with growing terrorism. In 2014, there were 32,658 people killed in terrorist attacks. That is not counting those who were injured. It is an 80% increase on 2013. A lot of this terrorism is rooted in Islamic fundamentalism. I also agree with colleagues who have said that the vast majority of Muslims are appalled by this activity. Islam is a peaceful religion in the main. What we see occurring is a vile corruption of it - total evil, total terror and totally at variance with everything we believe in.

A author called Steven Pinker wrote a book which I suggest people might read, called The Better Angels of our Nature. He talks about the history of violence through the millennia. His thesis is that we have never lived in a more peaceful age. That is probably true, looking at the statistics he brings forward. He talks about the reasons this is the case, for example the rise of the modern nation state, judiciary and the rule of law. That is not something we should take for granted anywhere. The rule of law is important. We might not always agree with laws that we pass in here, for instance, but they are the law and we should obey the law and get other people to do so. I always maintain that democracy is a very fragile flower. It is fine to change the law but no-one should be breaking it or advocating breaking it.

The book also discusses commerce and points out that people become more valuable alive than dead in the modern nation state. There is also an increasing respect for the interests of women, whereas women are not treated well at all under the rule of daesh and others like that, in fact they are treated appallingly badly. Literacy, mobility, mass media, empathy and so on, and the escalation of reason are the five points Pinker puts forward for the decrease in violence. We cannot take that decrease in violence for granted. This could happen anywhere. We also have to be very careful that we make sure the Garda and Defence Forces are properly equipped, and that we share information with our neighbours and partners.

One of the reasons we are so appalled by this in Ireland is that France is so like us in many ways. The French are our neighbours, cousins and partners just across a small stretch of water going back an awful long time. We can empathise with them and feel for them. In Iraq last year, however, 9,900 people died in terrorist attacks. In Nigeria it was 7,500; in Pakistan 1,700; in Afghanistan 4,500; in Syria 1,600 and so on. I get those figures from the Institute for Economics and Peace, which has listed 162 countries according to peace. We are very high up on that list. It is very peaceful here. Iceland, Denmark and so on are similar. With these other countries it is shocking - we have no idea what is going on.

There is a link there with being forced to flee. Some 4.29 million people have fled Syria, while 369,000 have fled Iraq according to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees. Melissa Fleming, the communications person in UNHCR, has a very poignant story about a boat carrying 500 refugees which sank at sea with two survivors. She tells the story on a TED Talks video. It is heartbreaking. The boat was deliberately sunk by the traffickers. One of the survivors was a young woman who was a student, and the other was the baby she was given by a mother who subsequently drowned. The mother handed the baby to this young student who happened to find a life raft. Melissa Fleming makes the point that the Islamic state wants us to hate refugees. Many colleagues have made that point. They would love to see us turning against refugees because of this but refugees should not be turned into scapegoats, as Fleming points out. We have got to be careful about that ourselves. At the same time, we have to ensure that our own people are safe. We cannot take it for granted. The evil we are up against wants to destroy us and our way of life. Just flying a neutral flag is not going to protect us here.

Another awful thing is that the terrorists make the development strategies impossible. The people who would go in to help refugees and victims of war cannot do so. The Geneva Convention does not fly and is not recognised there in any shape or form.

In recent times, they have changed tactics and are now attacking civilians and private citizens. They want to inculcate fear and mayhem among our citizens. We must stand with our colleagues in Europe, the western world and other countries across the world that abhor these tactics. We have to see that there is a total philosophy at play which is completely at variance with anything we value.

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