Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent)

One million Irish people, the Taoiseach's ancestors and mine, starved to death during the Great Famine in the 1840 and 1850s. Two million of us were driven to cross the Atlantic in coffin ships in search of mere survival. Thousands of us died on those ships. At home, our people died in cabins, in ditches, on the roads and in workhouses. There is hardly a parish in the country that has not a famine graveyard. To this day, the awful devastation of the Famine is imprinted in our minds, our hearts and our very souls. While the failure of the potato crop was the initial cause, the appalling vista is that the Famine could have been avoided but for the deliberate actions and inaction of a foreign imperial Government. The continued export of shipload after shipload of food from Ireland while we starved was thoroughly disgraceful and inhuman.

Today, 2.3 million Palestinians are facing starvation.

All reputable international organisations say that 500,000 Palestinians are facing catastrophic levels of hunger while another 1 million are facing emergency levels of hunger.

The State of Israel and its defence forces are deliberately starving the Palestinian people. They have blocked all food aid to Gaza since 2 March and, in the words of the Israeli defence minister, no humanitarian aid will enter Gaza. The shiploads of food exported from Ireland during the Famine can be compared to the 3,000 truckloads of food being blocked by the Israel Defense Forces on the borders of Gaza.

I acknowledge and appreciate the Taoiseach's description of this as a war crime and I acknowledge and appreciate the involvement of the State with South Africa in the international courts, but we must do more. This State and the Taoiseach, because of our famine history and our neutrality, have a unique moral authority and obligation to do everything in our power to stop the genocidal starvation of 2.3 million human beings in Gaza.

The Israeli state must face consequences. The Taoiseach has himself described it as a war crime.

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