Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is correct that all sides need to sit down and negotiate a political solution but that will not happen without some serious arm-twisting. The European Union has the power to do that. The Minister, as a representative of a small, neutral country, has an opportunity to be at the forefront in advocating a suspension of arms sales to the region.

I appreciate that the Minister is genuinely motivated but I just do not get it because there is a contradiction between what he is saying and what he is doing. It is a bit like telling one's children not to eat sweets and then buying them sweets. That is what the EU is doing when demanding an end to humanitarian abuses and deploring the starvation etc. at the same time as facilitating countries to carry out the abuses in the first place and giving them the arms to do so. We are not directly involved but I advocate Ireland being to the fore in the EU in arguing for a change in this regard and demonstrating to the Saudis and UAE that we are not into what I have described. There is an incredible irony in that the humanitarian disaster in Yemen is even worse than that in Syria. The Irish Government supports full-scale sanctions in every respect regarding Syria. We are not arguing for sanctions covering all goods; we just want an end to the sale of arms. How could anybody not advocate and articulate that viewpoint? I just do not understand it.

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