Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are one of the largest contributors to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, UNRWA, on a repeated basis, which assists both Gaza and Palestine. We have raised it. UN Secretary General Guterres has praised Ireland. He pulled me aside at a European Council meeting to thank Ireland for its assertiveness on the Security Council in respect of the Middle East and Palestine. It is very easy to come in here and throw cheap shots at the Government's position. We have been very consistent over the last number of decades. We are one of the few countries in the European Union that has asserted itself in respect of this issue and taken a lot of criticism for so doing, might I add, from different quarters. That is the reason I put the point to the Deputy. He needs to let us know what feedback his party is getting from the people they are meeting with and if they raise it with them at all. I never get any feedback on that.

Deputy Boyd Barrett raised that issue as well, including Nablus and so forth. I met with Mahmoud Abbas recently. I also met with the Palestinian Prime Minister in London, coincidentally, as we were going to the Queen's funeral. In my view there is an absolute need to stop the settlements and for a genuine peace process between Israel and Palestine but there is a need for reform within Palestine as well. We need elections within the West Bank and Gaza. There has not been an election to the authority in 15 years or more. That is not satisfactory either. We made these points. We need to continue to support the Palestinian Authority, resource-wise, so that it can administer services to its people. Ultimately, the only way out of this endless saga is to try to get a two-state solution in place.

I do not think that in any way invalidates our condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which Deputy Boyd Barrett seemed to suggest. What is going on in Ukraine is beyond condemnation at this stage. It is incredible inhumanity, in particular the drone attacks on civilian targets and energy security. Putin basically wants to make life in Ukraine uninhabitable. I have not seen the scale of what he is doing anywhere in modern times, bar what happened in Syria and, again, he himself did that.

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