Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is my daughter's sixth birthday today. I think about the world and the Europe we are creating for her and all the children, living and those to come. It is incredible that the project of the European Union, which was supposed to be about peace and improving quality of life for the people living there, now appears to be about to become a project of war. This will not make Europe safer or improve the quality of life of its people. It is incredible when we think back to the austerity cuts that devastated Europe but that the European Union said were required to meet the fiscal rules only to see that now, when it comes to war, there is no limit on the availability of funding. The European Union is creating a fund of €800 billion that will go into the profits of the European arms industry, yet when we look at the figures on poverty, we see that almost 100 million people in the European Union are living in poverty. The war we need in Europe is a war on poverty, not the weapons of destruction pumping the European arms industry. What is Ireland's role in this? Where are we shouting "Stop"? This will not make Europe safer or improve the quality of life of our people. We need a war on poverty, with billions of euro invested in housing and healthcare across Europe, and not this approach.

I want to speak briefly on Gaza and Palestine more widely. What we are seeing there is genocide. We need to repeat that it is genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ireland needs to be stronger in how we challenge that on the international stage. The Government rolling back on its determination to implement the occupied territories Bill is completely wrong. The Government is saying that the Bill is still there but Micheál Martin told that group in Washington that the Bill was effectively going to be dropped and would not be implemented. We need to see the Bill properly implemented within its true meaning. When we see what Israel is doing, we need to see sanctions against that country to stop the genocide and ethnic cleansing. Ireland can do more. We can inspect the planes passing our airspace. Where are the inspections to ensure that Ireland is not complicit in genocide?

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