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

What value is given to life? If recognising Palestine saves one life, is it not worth it? History is a funny thing when you look at it one way. When you look back it is something that is taken for granted. When Hitler was on his reign, the media said that humanity would never see something like this again. Then we had Rwanda when the Hutus and the Tutsis slaughtered one another and turned on one another’s families. We said we would never see that again. Then we had the war in Ukraine. People said we would never see that again. Now we have Israel and this war.

God rest my father, he would be 113 years old today. Born in 1911. How many wars would he have seen had he lived? He is dead since 2009. It is becoming more and more frequent every decade. And it is coming closer and closer to home, which is a very scary thought. I see people fighting every day of their lives. One person comes to mind because we are going to do a fundraiser for her this weekend. Carol Liston O'Connor is fighting for her life. She has five children. She has motor neurone disease and is fighting for her life to spend one more day with her children. Yet every week and every month, we are looking we are looking at people being killed needlessly; every day; every hour and every second.

Then you see people at war who have no respect even for the humanitarian people who go out to try to help people and feed them. Then they dismiss it and say, “Oh, I am sorry about that. We killed 34 people”. What type of people are we dealing with who have no respect for life?

What is it all about? Greed, money, minerals under the ground, oil, or whatever. What is it they are actually fighting for? Is it more land? Is it more power? They have no respect for the same people they say they represent.

I have one thing to say to those people, which is that we will all go into the ground in the same box. There is an old saying in this country: there is no hitch on a hearse. No matter what you do in this life you should respect people, regardless of their religion or race and, hopefully, they will respect you for whatever you follow in life. When we do come to the end of our days and when we go into the ground for our next reward, people should be able to say that we tried to help people in life and respected them. There is very little respect left in the world when we see the number of wars that are going on at the moment.

If I could hope for one thing, it would be that people could finally learn that life is such a precious thing. Our ancestors lived long lives and they worked hard. Now, people think they can end a life just like that. They do not have any respect for anyone’s life. Any person who does not have respect does not even come into my thoughts. The world is becoming a horrible place when a handful of people dictate to the world, dictate wars and bring hardship on people. My message to the people who are waging war just to get more power, land or whatever, is that there is no hitch on a hearse. When they go to their eternal reward, they can take none of this with them. They should use their time on this earth to help people and not cause harm.

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