Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I am using the example of Frank Aiken to demonstrate a time when Ireland took a maverick position, stepped out from the group and acted unilaterally as a way of achieving something. Now we seem to have lost the courage to go beyond ourselves. It is with that spirit in mind that I am saying to the Tánaiste that now, when the dogs of war are once again assembling and when we are seeing a genocide being inflicted upon the people of Gaza, we should go further and where necessary, act unilaterally.

I do not doubt the Tánaiste's commitment, integrity or desire to bring peace to the Middle East. I do not doubt his conviction in going over there and while I would disagree with some elements of the visit, that is fine because this is a parliamentary democracy. What I would love this State to do is to be the first to call for sanctions because in the context of what we are speaking about now, everything is going to come back to Israel's gross genocide. What Israel has not experienced, either in this genocide and invasion or the apartheid it has inflicted through 75 years of oppression and occupation and forced displacement of Palestinian people, is consequences. That is why we are pushing so far. The Tánaiste was not here last week for the debate on the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. I appreciate that we went quite far with that call but what we left out there were several other calls to which the Government could actually respond. It could say that it was not going to do that but that it appreciated the need for action to be taken. We left, for example, EU trade agreements on the table. The Tánaiste's own party colleague, the MEP Mr. Chris Andrews has endorsed that proposal at EU level.

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