Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

I was sitting in this chair a couple of weeks ago when the Taoiseach said the word. I had to do a double-take to see if I heard correctly. The Taoiseach said, “Let us call a spade a spade”, what is happening in Gaza is “genocide”. That was an important moment. After 19 months of evasion and legal gymnastics, the Taoiseach finally said it. He stood in the Chamber and admitted what the world has seen in real time since October 2023: that the Government of Israel, under Benjamin Netanyahu, is committing genocide in Gaza. What did he do with that truth? He used it as a soundbite while voting down a Bill that would have stopped Ireland facilitating that very genocide through the sale of Israeli war bonds. That is not just moral cowardice; it is complicity with eyes wide open.

The Taoiseach said yesterday in this Chamber to my colleague, Deputy Gibney, that she was using the word “complicity” cheaply. Let us go into that a bit. The bonds are advertised openly and shamelessly as a way to support Israel’s war effort. They are not ambiguous instruments. The prospectus spells it out. The advertisement says the quiet part very loudly: “Stand with Israel”; “Israel is at war”. These bonds bankroll the bombs, starvation and extermination, and Ireland is signing off on them through our Central Bank.

The Taoiseach’s position, now backed by the Tánaiste and presumably by the Minister, is that genocide is happening but Ireland must do nothing that might affect our GDP or affect our relationship with the US. This comes down to Palestinian lives being weighed against bond markets and bilateral trade flows – genocide reduced to a line item on a spreadsheet.

However, genocide is not a technical issue. To use the word “genocide” in our Parliament is not just a throwaway word; it has meaning. It has to. We are told that the Central Bank is independent, and that it just signs off on paperwork. However, the Central Bank does not operate in a moral vacuum. This is not a technical question. This is a test of whether Ireland honours its legal obligations under the Genocide Convention, obligations we took on not as a favour to anyone but because we believe there must be no lines that States can cross without consequence. We believe that “never again” should mean exactly that.

So let us call it what it is: a calculated dereliction of duty cloaked in humanitarian rhetoric. This Government condemns the killing in Gaza while actively enabling the financing of it. It mounts concerns about the enforced famine but will do nothing about the cargo planes flying out of Shannon Airport. It recognises the State of Palestine while killing off every piece of legislation that might make a difference. The occupied territories Bill was delayed, delayed and delayed, and then watered down. The restrictive measures Bill – gone. With this motion today, the motion two weeks ago and any motion that parties across the Chamber have brought forward, we are always told we are being naïve.

The Taoiseach said he wanted to "call a spade a spade" when he used the phrase “genocide”, so let us do that. What is happening in Gaza is genocide. What is happening in this Chamber is, by virtue of the fact we are refusing to meet our obligations under the prevention of genocide, collusion. What the Taoiseach has done is speak the truth only in order to bury it. When did he come to believe that this is genocide? Was it before or after the ICJ’s ruling? Was it before or after arrest warrants were sought by the ICC? Did he have to see the piles of bodies of starving children for himself? Was it when every journalist in Gaza was targeted and every educational institution was obliterated? Was it when we debated whether they would actually bomb a hospital, and then realised that they were bombing every hospital?

Genocide does not happen in the shadows. It thrives when others look away. It spreads through delay, distraction and diplomacy that always stops just short of doing the one thing that might actually matter, and that is to refuse to play a part in it.

This is not about any attempt at virtue signalling. Nobody believes that anybody has a monopoly on compassion, but we do believe that we can do more. This is about whether we stand by international law when it is hard; whether we believe genocide is wrong, even when it is being carried out by an ally of our ally; and whether we are willing to accept the political or financial costs to stop being part of the machine.

The Government talks a lot about being on the right side of history, but history is being written right now by the people this country, Europe and the US are failing; by the children starving under blockade; and by the silence of those who knew and did nothing. It is not being written by any journalist because journalists are not allowed into Gaza precisely because they do not want us to see the truth of the horrors being inflicted there.

We have said the word, and now we need to act like it means something. The countermotion brought forward by the Minister does not speak to a Government that is willing to live up to every obligation that we have. It is just another form of phraseology as a way of avoiding our responsibility. In his countermotion, which is very well worded, he said that "the Genocide Convention requires states to undertake ‘to prevent and punish genocide’”. Am I to believe that the Taoiseach, the leader of our country, has stood there and said the word “genocide” and then we just equivocate, saying, “Actually, you know what, this is a technical issue. We are not obliged. The Central Bank is independent”? No. We have moral authority in this. There has been no diktat given to the Central Bank to challenge and question whether we are sure these bonds and terms of prospectuses are in keeping with our obligations under the prevention of genocide Act. If we are not, why are we not speaking out?

The countermotion talks about all the things the Government has done. I accept – I think we all do as it is regularly referred to across the Chamber – that the Irish State has gone further than most although that is precisely because the bar has been so low. The countermotion emphasises the importance of “the review by the EU of Israel's compliance with its obligations under Article 2 of the EU-Israel Association Agreement”. Brilliant. I was in the Chamber 17 months ago when my party leader, Holly Cairns, first brought that to the Chamber. We know that the Government has gone further than most, but we also know that, at times, it is being done kicking, fighting and scrapping. The Minister’s former party leader, Leo Varadkar, wrote to Ursula von der Leyen asking whether Israel was in breach of the EU trade agreement. And what happened? Nothing. There was no response by the EPP, which the Minister’s party is a member of and proudly speaks to being a member of. He went out and advocated after the European elections for her to resume the position she is now in, despite the fact they did not even acknowledge a letter from his own Taoiseach and party leader asking whether Israel was in breach of that very covenant. This is extraordinary. We can do more.

See this speech in context