Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ireland has always boxed well above its weight internationally. Ireland is a broker of peace. We see Israel and talk about legalities, and legal this and legal that. What it is doing is absolutely horrendous. There are young children, mothers, males and females, and bombings going on. We talk about how we will be able to do something soon, but by the time it is done they will have a race wiped out by killing men, women and children. The children and people who survive this are then in hospitals with no medicines because humanitarian aid is being blocked from going in. There are children and people being operated on with no anaesthetics and no pain relief, with limbs pulled off. Can you imagine it - no pain relief? We then see food and basic things from a humanitarian side that no-one should stop, and they are stopping those as well. I cannot understand why the world is sitting back and saying it will get them in front of the International Court of Justice and make them pay. How long will it take, pushing pieces of paper here, there and everywhere, and no accountability? This country has looked after people from a war in Ukraine. We have looked after them well and treated them as our own. This is the second war in how long. It is now normal for us to talk about wars in this House, and nothing is being done about these wars on a world stage. Ireland is a small island, and a caring island, and we are a broker of peace. If any message goes out to the world today it is that no-one should be able to take a life and if countries try to wipe out a race through war, they should be held accountable now and we should not wait and wait. The next thing is we will look at it in history books in years to come and say that we sat idly by and did nothing about it. I ask the Minister of State to send a message from Ireland that we are brokers of peace and we want this to stop now.

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