Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am a little out of breath because I joined the many thousands of students protesting outside the House. I want to give a shout out to them. They are keen that the Taoiseach hears their opposition to fees and the potential for a student loan scheme. I mention that in passing. I support them 100%, and I hope the Taoiseach does also.

I will attend another protest this evening, which relates directly to the Taoiseach's position in Europe and the European Council. That protest relates to the appalling atrocities taking place in Syria. The protest will make a specific call on the Taoiseach to speak out and condemn all bombing, military intervention, and support for warring factions in Syria or in other conflict areas in the Middle East, particularly Yemen, and in Iraq.

The need for this issue to become a priority and for the Taoiseach to speak out loudly on the public stage in Europe, and to the United States and Russia, hardly needs to be stated. The estimated number of deaths in Syria is 470,000. Between 7 million and 11 million members of the Syrian population are displaced, out of a population of 22 million. The appalling Russia and Assad assault on Aleppo is an obscene action by any standard that must stop immediately. The need for the Taoiseach to speak out and for Ireland to play a role on the international stage in speaking out against these atrocities is urgent.

It is very important, and this is the point of the protest, that we are even-handed and consistent in our humanitarianism and our opposition to war. What the Russians and Assad are doing in Aleppo, and what they have done to their own population, which rose up in a peaceful popular revolt against the brutal regime that is the Assad regime, is appalling and beyond words in its horror. Equally, however, other powers have now cynically manipulated the civil war that has erupted in Syria to try to further their own interests. We must be absolutely consistent in opposing their bombing, their manipulation and their actions, which are serving only their strategic and political interests and making an already bad situation worse, effectively pouring petrol on a blazing fire.

It is noticeable that some people are very one-sided in their condemnation, so I repeat that we must condemn utterly the barbarity of the Russian and Assad intervention with consistency and authenticity. Our opposition to horror and war requires us to equally condemn US bombing, for example, the bombing in Manbij, which claimed the lives of 60 civilians in July and helped scupper a ceasefire. There is no condemnation of that atrocity, for example, in the Fianna Fáil motion that has been submitted. There is no condemnation of the 20 civilians killed in Damascus by US bombing. There is no condemnation of the 43 bombing assaults by the United Kingdom. There is condemnation of the bombing by France, which has killed dozens of civilians. There is no condemnation of the fact that the US, France and Britain continue to sell billions worth of arms to Saudi Arabia, which it is using to support groups like the Al-Nusra Front, which is up to its eyes in the horror going on in Syria, or the appalling Saudi bombing of Yemen, which is creating a humanitarian crisis just as bad as that in Syria and in which the US is directly involved.

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