Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their questions. I will respond first to Deputy Haughey. This Parliament has already passed a motion in favour of the recognition of Palestine as a state. The Government wants to fulfil that in a way that is meaningful. We could do it unilaterally tomorrow but it would be effectively a press release that would be dismissed by Israel and nobody would follow it. What makes more sense is to do it on a multilateral basis and we are in discussions with approximately half a dozen other countries about doing it as a group and, crucially, linking it to the Palestinian Authority, or, I hope, a reformed Palestinian Authority, taking back control of Gaza and giving it the status of state, and then its engaging with Israel on an equal basis. That is the way we want to do it.

The EU-Israel association agreement that governs relations between the EU and Israel has a democracy and human right clause. It is my opinion and that of Prime Minister Sánchez that Israel is in flagrant and open violation of that clause and is almost boasting about that, quite frankly, which I find shocking. We are pursuing this matter. The Tánaiste pursued it at a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council as recently as Monday and I will do so bilaterally and at the European Council in late March.

Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about double standards. To be frank, in foreign policy, there are double standards, triple standards and quadruple standards all the time. That does not mean it is a good thing. There is evidence of double standards in the European Union's responses in Ukraine and Palestine.

I have called that out. The Deputy also engages in double standards sometimes. I could not count the number of times the Deputy has raised Palestine as an issue during Taoiseach's questions and Leader's Questions. He has done so on so many occasions. I could count the number of times Ukraine was raised, probably on one hand or two. That is evidence of double standards. The Deputy's lack of interest in human rights in places like Cuba and Venezuela, because they are socialist, represents double standards. If he were as critical of them as he is of China, for example, he would not be guilty of double standards.

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