Aidan Farrelly (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank colleagues in Sinn Féin for tabling the motion this evening. During a recent UN Security Council meeting, a humanitarian affairs co-ordinator stated that a generation of children has been left traumatised. I would like to focus my contribution on the children and young people of Gaza and the West Bank. Some 17,000 children have died since October 2023. The entire population of children in County Offaly is 17,000.

At the same Security Council meeting, members received reports that children were beginning to allow themselves to dream again. They dreamt of going back to school, playing with their friends and not hearing constant shelling. These simple dreams are made more impossible since 88% of school buildings have been damaged by Israeli bombing. There is a generation of children in Gaza and Palestine who know only displacement, familial separation, terror and loss. Yet, they still dare to dream of a future where they can play with their friends and go to school.

When I read reports that the Taoiseach and his Government intend to scrap the occupied territories Bill, I was genuinely speechless. Notwithstanding the potential diplomatic consequences of what might come next, it is time to enact that Bill. It is imperative that we do so. It is all too easy to talk about what we cannot change and cannot do. Enacting the Bill is something tangible we can and should do. When the day comes that this genocide ends, when the children of Gaza and Palestine get to dream again and to be children again, they deserve our solidarity.

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