Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

It is time for the Government to put an end to the Irish Central Bank facilitating the sale of Israel's war bonds throughout the European Union. There is simply no limit to the cruelty Israel inflicts on the people of Gaza. Not content with perpetrating 19 months of genocide, massacring tens of thousands of Palestinians - mostly children, women and the elderly - Israel has imposed a blockade on Gaza.

The supply of food and vital humanitarian aid has been cut off to a people hanging on for dear life. The children of Gaza are being starved, exposed to disease and left to perish. We have seen these poor, frightened children on our screens, skin and bone. Their sunken faces and wide eyes look out into the world for answers to this simple question: who will help us and who will stop this? This is not a famine. This is starvation forced upon an impoverished refugee population with nowhere to go and no way out. This is the weaponisation of starvation against children, the sick and the elderly. The genocidal Israeli regime is sending a murderous message to the Palestinians: if the airstrikes do not get you, if the IDF death squads do not get you, if rampant disease does not get you, then starvation will.

It is shameful that the Irish State and Government would have any hand, act or part in facilitating this genocide but that is exactly what they are doing by allowing the Irish Central Bank to trade in Israeli war bonds, permitting the Irish Central Bank to act as a gateway for the sale of these bonds throughout the European Union. The Government is allowing Ireland to play a role in the financing of this genocide. Israel hides nothing about these bonds; it is very clear they are being used to fund its military onslaught in Gaza, yet Government allows this to continue.

A year ago, this very week, the Government recognised the State of Palestine, sending a message to the world that Ireland stands with the people of Palestine and Gaza. In the time since then, however, this Government has stood back and with eyes wide open, allowed Ireland to be used as a financial staging post by Israel to fund its atrocities. There is something perverse about telling a people faced with genocide that the Government recognises them and stands with them while at the same time facilitating funding the very weapons being used to slaughter their children. How doe it possibly reconcile itself with such a treacherous contradiction?

It should not be lost on anyone that the Government does this all the while and at the same time abandoning the occupied territories Bill and moving to dismantle Ireland's neutrality. Let me be clear: allowing the Irish Central Bank to continue to deal in and facilitate the sale of Israeli war bonds is an endorsement of genocide. It makes Ireland complicit. It flies in the face of the ordinary people of Ireland who have marched, protested, campaigned and, with everything they have, stood up for the rights of Palestinians to live and live free.

Irish people know our history - the history of colonisation, occupation, dispossession and starvation - and they simply will not tolerate this Government allowing the Irish Central Bank to facilitate the raising of funds for Israel's genocidal regime. Israel's war machine has some of the most sophisticated weaponry in the world but the greatest weapon in its arsenal is the impunity gifted to it by the international community-----

See this speech in context