Jim O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When President Biden was making his statement on 24 April, he said the reason American policy had changed was not for the purpose of trying to cast blame but in order to ensure this would not happen again.

We need to recognise that regrettably, there will be efforts at genocide again in this century as there were in the last century. The purpose here is not to try to hold any country to account. In fairness, there is no country today that represents the Ottoman Empire of the past and nobody is suggesting that a country should be held liable. However, if acts of genocide happened in the previous century, no matter how far back, it is important that we as a State face up to our responsibility to assess it and figure out whether it was genocide. We should look at it again. If we are going to just leave it there and say that we will not come back to it until there is a ruling by an international court, we are not going to face up to the fact that this is an injustice that needs to be responded to, notwithstanding its antiquity.

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