Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I too welcome the opportunity to speak on the very important Bill. We have had a lot of discussion about all of the atrocities happening in Ukraine and our attitude towards them. There has been a lot of suffering there. For some reason, we seem to not want to talk about what is happening on the other side of the world and what is happening between Israel and Palestine. We have to talk about it, however. As a neutral country and a country that suffered a lot over a long period, it is time we stand up to the plate, look at what we can do, lead internationally and tell the international community what we are doing.

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This Bill is a small step but it sends a clear message to the world that we do not tolerate what is going on. Pushback will come on the basis that we would not want to do that because we may put ourselves in a position in which we would lose out financially, economically or internationally in investment times. At the end of the day, as the Minister of State knows well, there is no price for children who are killed. I got a card in the post this morning, as I am sure every Deputy did, about a 13-year-old who was killed. This year alone, 20 innocent Palestinian children have been killed by Israeli fire. I will not be judge and jury on all of that but there is something wrong when that kind of thing happens and goes unchecked and has been going on for decades. We must not worry about the consequences of an action we will take on this matter, such as an economic sanction. Although it is a small one, I think we should take this as a first step to alert Israel to the fact that, no more than Russia, we do not want to see other power blocs killing innocent people. We must get the problem solved. As a country, we had a lot of strife in the North of Ireland during which many innocent people were killed, which was followed by a peace process. We must stand up and say there will be economic consequences if it continues and if Israel comes on board, we can negotiate a peace process. It cannot go on forever.

I listened heard as a young child about the Gaza Strip and everything that was going on there. It is still going on. Maybe, as a person who is older now, we are getting immune to the whole thing and we ignore it. I do not think we can and as politicians and legislators, we have an opportunity to send out a clear economic statement, which we did with Ukraine. We used economic means as a tool to try to curb the atrocities happening in Ukraine. We should do the same thing in this case. It is tokenism really but it sends a clear message and we should do it. It will be a great day for us in the House if we were to do this. I support the Bill as it has been introduced and I hope the Government will not, with its amendment, postpone it for nine months. If 20 children have already been killed this year so far, in another nine months, what will happen? We must plough ahead and be brave enough to do it. We now have a voice in the UN, as a permanent member of the United Nations. It would be a fantastic way for us to show our mettle as a small country, which is lucky to now live in peaceful times.

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