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

Will the Taoiseach include Egypt on his itinerary of foreign visits? As the Taoiseach knows, the trial of Ibrahim Halawa has dragged out for more than four years. He has suffered terribly in that time. He is going through a laughable legal process under what is now just a tin-pot repressive dictatorship that is locking up en masseanyone in its own population who politically dissents against its brutal regime. The prosecution case against Ibrahim finally got going and ended at the weekend, but the Halawa family's fear is that the judges will be changed in September, given that Egypt changes its judges. If that happens, the whole process will return to the start and there will have been four wasted years. That cannot be allowed to happen.

I urge the Taoiseach to increase the Government's efforts by making a high-level visit to Egypt and insisting that our citizen be brought home. This sham legal process cannot continue. Ibrahim Halawa cannot stand much more time incarcerated in that country.

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