Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

Yesterday, 94 Palestinians were killed in Gaza. Forty-five of them were killed while waiting for aid from the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Today, so far, 87 people have been killed, and every day has a similar horrific number of casualties. In just one month, 600 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4,200 have been wounded by Israeli fire near aid distribution sites. A new low in this genocide is the use of aid as a weapon to ethnically cleanse large parts of the Gaza Strip and to assemble people in order to be shot down in what is being described as a death trap. People saw the horrendous pictures from Monday of a café and the people inside it blown to bits. It has been reported that a 500 lb was used by the Israeli military to do this.

The Minister has previously and repeatedly defended the authorisation of the sale of Israeli bonds by the Irish Central Bank. We know now from the Central Bank that €418 million was raised by Israel in these war bonds approved by the Central Bank between October 2023 and April 2025. That is a quarter of all funds generated globally by these bonds. How many bullets did that pay for? How many missiles did it pay for? How many bombs did it pay for? Does the Minister accept that it is time to stop this complicity of the Irish State in genocide?

Let me quote a Central Bank worker who stated:

When over fifty-thousand people – seventeen-thousand of them children – are dead, murdered in their homes, schools, hospitals or killed trying to escape the slaughter (Rafah, Jabalia, Khan Younis, etc.) I must admit I find it difficult to discern the difference between the Bank’s official line – ‘we are guided by the law and if the requirements under the prospectus regulations are being met, we must comply with the law’ and the defence claimed by Soldier F, the perpetrators of genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Sudan, Myanmar the defendants at Nuremberg – ‘we were just following orders’ – the Superior Order defence.

The same applies to a Government which has twice now voted not to end this complicity. It is incredibly unfair to put the workers in this situation because of the Government's failure to act. We know that there is an email from the Israeli Ministry of Justice previously talking about a confidential phone call with the Minister and the Minister saying that the Government would block the occupied territories Bill. Now, here we are again, with the Minister blocking action to stop funding the genocide. What will it take to shift the Government on this? What will it take for the Minister to act?

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