Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

The Saudi state is trying to persuade many European universities to set up campuses in the new King Abdullah Economic City. In June last year representatives of the city met those of several Irish universities and of Enterprise Ireland to this end. The meeting came just three months after the Saudi state executed 81 prisoners, mainly by beheading, in one day. Many were political prisoners and many had been imprisoned for the crime of being a member of a religious minority.

According to the European Saudi Organisation for Human Rights, there are currently 61 Saudi prisoners on death row, eight of whom were arrested when they were minors. Human rights campaigners fear another mass execution in the weeks ahead. That is why they are organising protests in 60 countries on 10 and 11 February. Will the Taoiseach join me in saying that no Irish university should establish a campus in Saudi Arabia or be part of a PR exercise for this brutally repressive regime? Will he urge Ursula von der Leyen to say the same thing for Europe as a whole?

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