Sinéad Gibney (Dublin Rathdown, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We in the Social Democrats are proud to co-sign this motion, and we thank the Labour Party for tabling it. It is when international law is under attack that we need to use these mechanisms most. Day after day since this genocide began, we have watched atrocity after atrocity.

It is difficult not to despair seeing the international system frozen in its tracks. This motion is about using the UN General Assembly to mobilise the international community to act on Gaza. Countries around the world are waiting for each other to take the lead. They are unwilling to stick their necks out for Palestine, unwilling to risk anything to save our shared humanity. We have a responsibility under the genocide convention to protect the Palestinian people from eradication. The Government has often stated, as a rebuttal to Opposition calls for action on Gaza, that there is a need to have an international response but this does not mean waiting for someone else to take the lead, as the Government has done, time and again, over the course of this genocide. We must push the countries of the global north into action and lend our strength to all those nations of the world which have already said that we must stop this genocide and together, we might be able to.

I welcome that the Government will not oppose today's motion and that it is showing willingness to engage with the multilateral system and to use the UN General Assembly, despite expected Security Council resistance. I look forward to that same willingness informing any alteration of the triple lock and a true pursuit of the UN General Assembly as a valid method to satisfy it. Be it on the triple lock or action on Gaza, we cannot have hand wringing on the Security Council and then a refusal to engage with the other mechanisms which are available to us. At every juncture we are pushed back against with cries of, "haven't we done more than most?" when the reality is that we have simply not done enough. I have heard time and again in this Chamber Government Ministers admonish me and others in opposition for asking them to do more to end this genocide, for supposedly politicising this issue. The Tánaiste began his response today by asking us to join together, not to politicise and not to position this as Opposition equals good, Government equals bad. I take huge exception to that narrative because we are not the ones politicising this issue; the Government is. All I am doing is expressing the authentic outrage of the people I represent. Here is my version: genocide equals bad, action equals good - now act. The Government points to the aid we have given, the words we have spoken and how we are doing more than many others and use this as a smokescreen for not passing the occupied territories Bill, for continuing the facilitate the sale of Israeli bonds, and for not stopping the flow of arms through our airspace. I understand that it may be annoying to not get a pat on the back for these things but I will not apologise for pushing us to be better, to fulfil our obligations under the genocide convention and our obligations to all of humanity. I have spoken to so many people in my constituency who are enraged and despairing at the complacency of the spin we have heard from this Government on Ireland's actions. They are angry and simply terrified to see the official line be so disconnected from reality and from the will of the people.

I will conclude with a quote from the writer Omar El Akkad. On 25 October 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, he said "One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it is too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this". It is not yet too late to hold people accountable. It is not yet too late to save those still alive in Gaza. I have no interest in pointing to platitudes and what little action we have taken when the Palestinian people ask their friends in Ireland why we did not do all we could.

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