Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Garth Brooks affair is like the Cabinet reshuffle in that it goes on and on. I realise there is a considerable number of disappointed people and a huge cost to the Irish economy but it is going from the sublime to the ridiculous when we get to the point of asking the President of the United States to intervene in five Garth Brooks concerts in Ireland.

If he has got that amount of free time, I would prefer him to bring his great intelligence to bear on resolving the situation in Palestine. There were 322 air strikes on Gaza last night, bringing to 750 the number of air strikes there since Operation Protective Edge commenced. It is truly time to get a grip.

I wish to bring Senators' attention to another matter. The Samsung Electronics Company is urgently investigating allegations that one of its suppliers in China has employed children and under-age students. China Labour Watch is looking into this matter and has said that Samsung's monitoring systems on child labour are ineffective. If it is proven that the Samsung Electronics Company, which is an electronics giant, is operating with the use of child labour, I would ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to ban all imports of Samsung products. In this day and age, it is outrageous that anybody would buy an electronics product wherein any child labour has been involved.