Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For all of those actions on the part of the Irish Government, if we want to be generous and describe them as such, here is what we know for sure. Israel could not be conducting a genocide in Gaza, carrying out its relentless attacks on the West Bank or be engaged in its invasion of Lebanon, including putting Irish peacekeeping members of the UNIFIL mission at risk, were it if not for the arms and munitions with which it has been supplied. We have had a number of very positive, strong statements from members of Government, but when it counts, this Government has been falling short every time. We had the ludicrous situation where the Taoiseach was sitting in the Oval Office and did not put the very particular demand of the Irish people to the US President that the US needs stop arming and financing Israel. He said it was not for him to tell a country what to do. Therefore, even if we take that at face value, which I do not, by the way, we have to look at what is happening here.

The Minister said that some of the information is not correct. Will he state which information published in The Ditch articles is not correct? How can he come to the determination that some provisions in those articles are not practical, yet he cannot come to a determination in respect of them all? Let me ask the Minister this very clearly. Have any munitions of war to his knowledge been transported through Irish sovereign airspace? Is the Minister satisfied that this has indeed been the case, despite the fact that he was very open in saying that there were absolutely no circumstances in which it was happening? Previously, the Minister issued a tweet, in fact, to give assurance to the Irish people. That tweet, and the assertions in this House that this action simply was not happening, have now been challenged. The Minister has not been able to say that is actually not true. Therefore, we have to assume that, in fact, Irish sovereign airspace has been used for that purpose. We need to know what the Minister is going to do about that.

See this speech in context