Grace O'Sullivan (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Buttimer for facilitating the debate and I am grateful to the Minister for attending because this is an important debate. I join previous speakers in expressing utter condemnation of the 14th deferment of Ibrahim's trial and the apparent restarting of the entire process. It is 1,046 days since Ibrahim was first incarcerated in Egypt. He was aged 17 when he was arrested and he is 20 now. He has lost those wonderful formative years when Irish teenagers explore the world and find their feet. My 17 year old daughter travelled to Spain yesterday to visit relatives, as she has done for many years. She was born in Holland but is an Irish citizen. If she took part in a protest, as 17 year olds do, and was arrested, I would move heaven and earth to try to bring her home and I would demand that the Government do so. I would like every Irish parent to imagine if their son or daughter went abroad, did nothing wrong and ended up enduring three years of extreme conditions in jail without trial what they would expect the Department of Foreign Affairs to do and what they would want the Government to do.

I was once detained abroad in 1985 by the French military along with three other members of Greenpeace. My mother frantically telephoned the former Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr. Peter Barry, who immediately engaged in intensive dialogue with his French counterparts. I was released and deported back to Ireland seven days later without a passport that had been destroyed. In Ibrahim's case, the approach of the Department has been one of caution and temperance. I understand the wisdom of adopting the approach deemed most successful but it has to be admitted that it has to date failed utterly. I implore the Minister to urgently request President al-Sisi to activate law 140 and issue a presidential decree allowing Ibrahim to come home as soon as possible. The Department asked for this previously but the circumstances now demand this request be more forcefully reinstated. We need to know the timeframe, how quickly can the Department can move forward with this request and what is the Minister's assessment of how likely it is to succeed.

No other EU citizen has been treated in such a way. Why then has Ibrahim, an Irish citizen, been left for so long without assistance? If his surname was O'Sullivan or Murphy, I cannot help but wonder whether his plight would have received the same attention in Ireland. He was born in the Coombe Hospital in 1995 and grew up in Dublin. He likes GAA. He does not deserve what has happened to him and we cannot turn our backs on him any longer. I would like renewed urgency from the Department in working towards Ibrahim's release. I would also like the Minister to exploit and exhaust every channel of support available to him, to meet former prisoners who have been released and who are offering their help, and to look to our allies abroad for support. Let us be certain that we are doing all we can. We cannot let this citizen remain in a Cairo prison any longer.