Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, hang on, I was the only Irish person in the room, so perhaps allow me the courtesy of telling the Dáil what happened. When I was there last week, every single Prime Minister and President, bar one - the Hungarian Prime Minister - supported President von der Leyen or, in the case of Italy, abstained. That included socialist governments. In fact, the Prime Minister of Spain, who is probably seen as an extraordinarily strong supporter of Palestine, supported her.

This attempt in Ireland to characterise the inertia at an international level in relation to the Middle East around one individual is misplaced. It is Ursula von der Leyen who significantly increased the UNRWA aid budget and it is she, right now, who is working on financial packages and support for the Palestinian Authority. She has been somewhat successfully portrayed as a bogey woman, but I am not sure how successful it actually was when we look at the outcome of elections across Europe. The effort to make her some sort of bogey woman does not tally at all with the actions she is taking. The fact that socialist and centrist Prime Ministers and Presidents supported Ursula von der Leyen after an election involving 180 million citizens speaks very clearly to her credentials.

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