Seanad debates

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

2:30 pm

Photo of Michael MullinsMichael Mullins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate sincerely Senator Máiría Cahill on her election to the Seanad and welcome her and her family to the House, particularly her young daughter. I join colleagues in extending our very good wishes to our dear friend Jimmy Harte and hope he continues to make good progress. We look forward to meeting him in the House as a visitor in the near future. Senator Cahill will bring a great deal to the House as a result of her life experience, some of which no person should have had to endure. She has spoken out with great courage and I was appalled at the level of abuse to which she was subjected in the course of the recent campaign. Senator Cahill is a person of courage and conviction. As someone who has admitted to having made some mistakes, she is ideally suited to be a politician. She will be a strong advocate for those who have suffered abuse from whatever source and I wish her a long and distinguished career in the short time left in the current Seanad and in her political life into the future.

I join colleagues in expressing the deepest sympathy to the families and relatives of all those who lost their lives in the horrific terrorist attack in Paris on Friday. Our thoughts are very much with the injured, to whom we wish a speedy recovery. This was a horrendous attack which was well planned and executed. It was an attack on democracy and the western way of life. We must all stand in solidarity with the French and work to ensure this axis of evil does not succeed. It is incumbent on all world leaders to address the root cause of these acts of mindless terrorism in order that ordinary people can go about their daily lives in the way we expect. A wonderful article appeared today in The Guardianwhich was written by a man called Nicolas Hénin, who is a French journalist who was recently held captive by ISIS. He makes some very interesting comments and refers to the problems of overreaction, division, fear and all the things that ISIS thrives on. At the end of his contribution, he said that there is no political roadmap to engage the Arab-Sunni community. He said that ISIS will collapse but that it is politics that will make it happen. It is incumbent on us all to work to ensure politics brings about solutions in the most troubled parts of the world today. We think very much of those people in Syria who are under siege.

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