Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I first raised with the Taoiseach in Taoiseach's Questions in the middle of November the Government's responsibility and obligations under the Genocide Convention. I have repeatedly raised it with him since and tried to explain it to him in multiple interventions, including in a Dáil motion in November. We are still discussing motions, and did so again this week, but the Government is clearly failing to discharge those responsibilities while the genocide continues in Gaza. When I first raised it with the Taoiseach in the middle of November, 11,000 people had been killed by Israel. Today, 25,000 people have been killed and 2 million people have been displaced.

I want to make it clear to the Taoiseach, who made reference to the Balkans in his response, that in previous rulings relating to Bosnia and Serbia, the International Court of Justice said that the Genocide Convention requires states to employ all means reasonably available to them to prevent genocide. It went on to say that a state incurs responsibility for breaching this obligation if it fails to take all measures to prevent genocide which were within its power and which might have contributed to preventing the genocide. I could go on but I do not have the time. The Taoiseach was asked about this in November, but as of this week, he is still saying that the Government is strongly considering intervention. Months on, with 10,000 more people murdered and the Government is still only considering it, when it has a clear legal obligation to act at the first instance of even a possibility of genocide. I ask the Taoiseach to respond to that.

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