Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I compliment Deputies Eoghan Murphy and Duncan Smith for facilitating this important date. It is 75 years since the United States committed the unspeakable crime of using nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in 1945 and a historic milestone has finally been achieved, with nuclear weapons declared illegal under a new United Nations treaty.

I regularly use the adage, "tosach maith, leath na hoibre", and it certainly was a tosach maith by Mr. Frank Aiken, who was a visionary in his time.

I wonder about this because although we are hailing it, there are still 13,000 nuclear warheads available for action, which is horrific. Are we really window dressing here? Is it a case of around the parlour and mind the dresser, of moving the deck chairs on that famous ship, Titanic? Are we really serious? While I welcome the fact that we have won a seat on the UN Security Council, that organisation lost its way a long time ago. We have seen the horror of what went on in the Middle East and what is still going on but we never have a debate about that here.

I welcome this debate today. Anything connected with nuclear weapons is horrific, given the damage they can do. We are focusing on this and rightly so, but why are we not also focusing on the persecution of Christians and minority Muslim sects in the Middle East? It is going on unabated and we are turning a blind eye. It is very seldom debated or even raised in this House. When some Independent Members of the House wanted to raise it a number of years ago, the Ceann Comhairle thankfully selected it for a Topical Issue debate on one Holy Thursday evening, which was very appropriate. However, there has not been a mention of the issue since that debate which took place three or four years ago. We are turning a blind eye.

We are also turning a blind eye vis-à-visthe use of Shannon Airport by US troops, and I support the Deputies who spoke about this earlier. We cannot be half in, half out or half neutral. We are either neutral or we are not, but we certainly must have a better knowledge and awareness of what is going on, particularly with regard to the persecution that is going on all over the Middle East as well as what went on in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US went into countries that are part of the United Nations, bombed the hell out of them and made the situation twice as bad. Before that, people of all religions and none could practise but now one particular religion and Muslim minorities are being persecuted, which is totally wrong.

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