Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)

I am glad to get the opportunity to talk about this matter here again this evening. It is a terrible situation. This war really needs to end. I do not know how we can influence that happening, but we need to send a strong message from this Parliament. We are a very small country. We cannot do anything physically to stop or prevent the war, but we need to send a strong message that we do not approve of what is happening now. It is very well reported. We see evening after evening little children holding out bowls to see if someone will throw something into them so they can eat. It is tough. No one has a monopoly on talking about this situation. It resonates very much with me to hear and see people starving to death. There have been explosions, atrocities, bombings and every bad thing you could think of happening there. It is the starving of people and the starving of children. The country and the world is full of food. How much food does every household throw out every evening or at the end of every week? How much food is thrown into waste? To think there are little children out there starving.

We still talk about the Famine in rural places because we are reminded daily of it. I do not know if the Minister is aware of it, but there are many fields up on the hillsides and slopes where the ridges still remain marking where people put their gardens. They did not stay alive or there was nothing in them to dig out.

They finished up on the Famine ships going to America and other places basically to get something to eat. I can remember being brought up and being told by my grandparents and granduncles that the thing that they really worked for daily - there was no such thing as money - was food. Even my own father as a 14-, 15- and maybe 17-year-old went around working on meithleacha in different places. There was no money but he got fed and there was one less to be fed at the table at home. That is what people had to work for at that time to stay alive.

I was told recently - the man who told me has since passed on - that there was a big strong man in the Kilgarvan parish and he did not have enough to eat. At most times of the day when people would meet him, he was chewing his wrist and chewing his arm because he was half-starved with the hunger; he needed a lot more to eat than he was getting. Those kinds of messages resonate and never leave my mind. It is terrible when we look at the television and see children holding out bowls and nothing going into them. I am not saying the Government here is at fault for it but we could send some message. I do not know what notice they will take of this occupied territories Bill, but we need to send them a message.

Europe is very lax has been very slow to react since the start. Von der Leyen is not decisive enough and is not acting to the extent that she could and we are disappointed with that. I am asking that the Opposition and the Government work together here and to send this message together as strongly as possible to the Israelis.

Of course, Hamas played its part in this atrocity in starting it off. I look at it from every angle, including from the angle that because Hamas will not release the last of the hostages, the Israelis will not stop the war. Have they no feeling at all for little children who are starving? They must be blamed as well. Whatever side is right, there is no right or wrong in this war now; it has to stop. We should be clear and decisive in saying that it needs to stop.

I do not know what is in the occupied territories Bill. I will vote for any Bill relating to this to send a message of some sort to all those involved that it must stop. We are disappointed that the USA which over the years has been fair, does not seem to be intervening to stop it. I am not saying that we should say clearly who is wrong or who is right, but it needs to be stopped for the sake of the little children who are starving. They should have their entire lives in front of them and it is so sad that they will not realise their potential. I feel very strongly about it when people are starving. The worst kind of death of all is to see people starving. We are not to blame for it. We are only a small country but we must voice our opinion and ask them to stop.

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