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

Presumably, if anybody in this House suggested that we should send a trade mission to Russia to develop our trade relationship, given what it is doing in Ukraine, they would get pretty short shrift from the Minister and from everybody else, rightly so. It would be similar if anybody suggested that it would be okay for any of our allies, so-called, to be selling weapons to Vladimir Putin in the current context. Yet, strangely, in the context of the Saudi war that has brought Yemen to the brink of catastrophe, Ireland sent a trade mission in November to develop trade relationships with Saudi Arabia, which is conducting this barbarous war in Yemen. Our allies, the US and the UK, are selling billions worth of weapons. The latest deal by the United States is a $500 million air-to-air missile arms sale and there are similar massive sales by the UK. Where is the condemnation? Where is the criticism? Where is the demand that these relations with the Saudi Arabian dictatorship conducting this brutal war in Yemen end immediately? Where are these demands?

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