Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Ar dtús, ba mhaith liom comhghairdeas a dhéanamh leis an Aire Stáit as an bpost nua atá aige. Ádh mór air.

Unfortunately, too many times, we have been in this Chamber while speaking about what we would have assumed was almost in the rear-view mirror of history. However, it seems that whether you look at Gaza, the Russian invasion of Ukraine or what is happening in Sudan, it is geopolitical chaos and could be the annals from the worst parts of global history. The fact is we have seen a move away from multilateralism, international law and the righteousness of international law. At some point, we will need to see the pendulum come back to a more sensible place but at the minute, the people of Sudan cannot afford to wait on that.

Straight away, it is a necessity that we play our part in ensuring that aid workers and a sufficient amount of aid gets to people who are starving at this point in time. We need the SAF and RSF to facilitate this and to allow UN observers in. It is beyond a disgrace what is going on, if we are talking about the year-and-a-half siege of El Fasher. It is like hell on earth and as bad as any place you can think of since the Second World War after what has been done. The UN has rightly labelled it one of the worst humanitarian cases. Just look at the news. How bad does something have to be? We are talking about one of the worst humanitarian crises.

We are talking about a war, a situation and a circumstance that we have been dealing with since April 2023. An awful lot of the time, there have rightly been eyes on some of the other conflict zones but this has been missed out on. It is the depth, magnitude and size of the horror and chaos. What are we talking about? Some 12 million people have been forcibly displaced and 150,000 people have already been killed. Think about that and the impact on that part of the world. Think of the chaos that has been caused. Think of the individual lives that have been lost and the families that have been destroyed.

That is before we get into the crimes that have been committed, particularly against women. I do not know how many times in history people said "never again", but unfortunately "never again" seems to actually mean "again and again and again", whether it was Rwanda 30 years ago, the Balkans, what Russia is doing in Ukraine or the genocide in Gaza.

As to the absolute size of this, we have a considerable number of people who will talk about the issue in relation to migration. We have all spoken about the fact that we need systems that work, but just think about 12 million people forcibly displaced. How will that not have an impact in relation to the rest of the world? It is a very much connected world.

As we all know, the United Arab Emirates has been engaged in supplying weapons that have played a major part in the RSF's capacity and in its destruction of human lives and all the other horrors alongside that. This is a proxy war. There are supporters on both sides. I listened earlier to Deputy Ó Laoghaire's interaction with the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, on the need to see pressure being put on the United Arab Emirates. I can accept that in public, the Government cannot say all that needs to be said. Whatever about in public, we must make sure that in private, in every corner where we have an ear that will listen to our voice, it is known that this is not acceptable. It is not acceptable to be facilitating the sale of gold, mining and human misery.

I agree with an awful lot of what my colleagues have said. This will finish, and we need to ensure that those who have been engaged in this horror, this absolute butchery, are held to account. We need to make sure that whatever leverage we have is brought to bear on those powers that have facilitated this and on anyone else who will listen to us in the international community. We need to do this because these people have been through what none of us can imagine. We need to make sure we are not back here at a later stage this year or next year, talking about numbers that are scaled up from what is abject and absolute horror.

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