Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----as is everybody else in this House. We have a parliamentary democracy in this country which I respect, and I respect the views of all citizens. I am under no illusion about the strength of feeling across the entire Irish people about what is happening within Palestine, and to Palestinians in Gaza in particular. My own party has been consistently supportive of a Palestinian right to its own state. Indeed, in our programme for Government, the three Government parties put together a commitment to recognise a state of Palestine, again co-ordinating with other member states and other countries to try to have as big an impact as possible to give momentum on the question of recognition. We have been very active. It is not just words. We have been very focused on all areas - diplomatic, legal, humanitarian and political. We have been pursuing every avenue at our disposal where we can have practical and real impact. On the humanitarian side, Ireland was one of the first, if not the first, to stand up and call for a stop to the attempts to undermine UNRWA and the pulling back of its funding. We have been effective on that front. It is acknowledged by UNRWA and by others that Ireland stood up and it was not just words; it was action.

On the legal front, we are already one of the few countries to make an oral submission to the ICJ case on the advisory opinion from the UN. The Attorney General made a substantive contribution to the court, following on from a very substantive written legal submission we made back in July 2023. I may stand corrected on that date. We were consistent on these issues even before this terrible war started. We have worked hard to secure the safe passage of many Irish citizens out of Gaza and that has been effective, with more than a hundred Irish citizens now out of Gaza. We have made it clear we will legally intervene in the International Court of Justice on the case initiated by South Africa, but that will take time. I am not saying that is all we will do but it does speak to the issue of accountability. Israel has to be held accountable through the international court system for what it has done. We have to advocate with other countries to win them over to our position. We have been effective, given where we started. Ireland would have been considered an outlier within the European Union on this question in terms of the positions we have consistently adopted but now a majority within the EU are very much in line with our position in respect of an immediate ceasefire, the release of hostages and a political process to resolve this on a more sustainable basis.

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