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

There is a deafening silence from the Government regarding the rogue Saudi state's murderous activities in Yemen that have brought 13 million to 14 million people to the brink of starvation, amid warnings of the worst famine in 100 years, in a war in which tens of thousands have already been killed and millions of others displaced. Virtually the entire population of Yemen is now dependent on humanitarian assistance. Saudi Arabia, with backing from the United States, the UK and France, is to a large extent responsible for this unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. With American-made weapons, it killed 40 children in a school bus on a school trip in August. In June, it hit a cholera treatment centre run by Doctors Without Borders when it was clearly marked as a medical facility. In April, it killed 20 members of a family at a funeral in the north west. The atrocities go on. In the past week, there was the barbaric killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the journalist, at Saudi Arabia's embassy in Turkey.

What will we do about this? Why the silence? Are we going to speak out about the incredible hypocrisy of standing by while all of this is happening when our Government is doing beef deals with Saudi Arabia and the US, the UK and France are selling the latter arms? After the Salisbury attack, our Government moved rapidly to expel Russian diplomats. Where are the expulsions of Saudi Arabia's ambassador and diplomats?

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