John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Within the next few weeks, we will mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the antecedents of which lie in the early efforts of Gerry Adams and John Hume. At the time, their efforts were much maligned and vilified by members of the establishment who failed to grasp the significance and potential of the early peace process. The Good Friday Agreement represents one of the most enduring and successful attempts at conflict resolution in the world. The roles of Irish America and of the Clinton Administration were pivotal to the development of the peace process. I welcome the planned visit by US President Joe Biden to Ireland to mark the anniversary of the agreement, and the continuing role that President Biden has played as a guarantor of the agreement.

The recent attack on Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell reminds us of the need for constant vigilance, the need to make politics work, and the need for political leaders to act as a bulwark against those criminal elements who, if they could, would drag the North back into a tragic cycle of senseless violence.

The current alignment among Westminster Tories of rampant English nationalism and blatant political opportunism highlights the importance of the role of the international guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement in the EU and the US.

I also want to highlight the case of Bernard Phelan, an Irish citizen being illegally detained in Iran. He was recently sentenced to six and a half years in prison in Iran on trumped up espionage charges. Bernard Phelan is not guilty of espionage. He is an Irish citizen, with serious health issues, being held as a political hostage by a government intent on leveraging his detention to wrest political concessions. The Irish Government needs to force the EU to prioritise his release on humanitarian grounds immediately.

In a polarised world, with emerging great power rivalries, global hunger and the need for humanity to meet the threat of climate change, the EU has an enormous moral, political and strategic role and responsibility to act as a catalyst for human rights and justice. It must ensure that these issues and the values on which the EU purports to operate are foregrounded in the arena of global affairs. If the EU fails to apply these values unequivocally, it forfeits its moral standing and undermines its capacity to impact international affairs to its full potential.

Nowhere is the attitude and approach of the EU found more wanting than in its approach to Palestine. The Government will come back and say that attitudes in the EU towards Palestine have changed and that the inclusion of a number of eastern European states has led to a more pronounced pro-Israel shift within the EU, but that is simply not good enough. It is a stark political reality that leadership always finds a way. If the will and the commitment are evident, the means to achieve an objective can and will be found. To suggest otherwise is to concede a failure of politics. The apartheid policies of the Israeli state towards the Palestinian people are catastrophic for Palestinians. The inertia of the EU's response serves to undermine the moral fabric of the political structure of the EU and, I dare say, of Ireland. The inflammatory statements of the current Israeli Government continue to inflame tensions within the occupied territories. Members of the Israeli Government would deny the very existence of the Palestinian people. They call for Palestinian villages to be completely wiped out. Only yesterday they overturned legislation that ordered the dismantling of Israeli settlements in the northern West Bank over 15 years ago. The occupied Palestinian territories are at the point of implosion. The stated Irish and EU position in support of a two-state solution is fast becoming an impossibility. Europe can and must do more.

A war crime is a war crime and all perpetrators must be held to account; otherwise what meaning does international law hold? The EU must treat the apartheid Government of Benjamin Netanyahu as it would any other band of war criminals. Ireland must be a catalyst in Europe to ensure that the International Criminal Court investigation receives full support and is expedited to hold Israeli war criminals to account.

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