Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While the Minister is telling us he is going to search, sample and sanction, he has given us no details of that. In an earlier reply, he said he was bringing a memo to Government with regard to searching, sanctioning and sampling. When is that going to happen? Why has it not happened before this? The Minister stands here and tells us that he wants to reassure the public. The only way to reassure the public is to stop reliance on the reassurance of the American Government, because they are our friends. That is what we have been told repeatedly in this Dáil.

I want to pay tribute to the people on the ground who have peacefully protested and shown their concerns, who have ended up before the courts and in jail, and who have begged us to inspect the planes and to stop taking the reassurances. When will the search, sampling and sanction happen? Will it happen before this Government falls? What steps are necessary to ensure that? Why have they not been taken before given that America is utterly complicit in genocide of the Palestinian people, which as now extended into Lebanon?

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