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

There are only two questions and we have a while so we will give plenty of time to the Minister of State to reply.

I want to press the Minister of State on the question of the nerve agent and the evidence on which the decision to expel a Russian diplomat was based. It was done on the word of British intelligence services, or perhaps it was that of the British Government alone, and then European leaders. There have been many references to the nerve agent. We all abhor the use of such agents. They are horrendous and the people responsible for their use should be brought to justice and prosecuted to the nth degree. However, what has not become clear - and I am asking the Minister of State if she can clarify the position in this regard - is the actual evidence that has been provided. I attended the Tánaiste's briefing yesterday. He said, frankly, that there is no smoking gun. He actually used the phrase, "There is no smoking gun". That worries me because two and two have been added together and we have got five. We are being told that a nerve agent was used - and we all agree that is unacceptable - and we think it was used by Russia. However, there is no evidence directly connecting Russia to what happened. Can the Minister of State shine any light on this? "Most plausible" or "highly likely" are not thresholds for making decisions that are really very serious for us. Can the Minister of State respond on that point? The other explanation was that it was the only plausible explanation. There are, however, other plausible explanations. This material was produced from the 1970s, often in states that are now not under Russian control. We know that it is very likely that in some areas which broke away from the Soviet Union, central government lost control over materials like that. I am not saying that the Russians did not do it, but to say there is no alternative plausible explanation in the absence of a smoking gun does not add up.

On the issue of double standards, specifically in respect of Palestine, if our line as an ethical foreign policy is that we are not going to put up with states that engage in behaviour which we consider to be beyond the Pale and that we are going to expel people, will that extend to what Israel is doing in flouting international law in its treatment of the Palestinians? Even when the United Nations is saying and producing reports in the last few weeks to the effect that Israel is doing things that are absolutely in direct violation of UN resolutions and international law, there are no expulsions or talk of sanctions. There is nothing. Is that going to change? Can we at least have some consistency in our foreign policy stances?

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