Sharon Keogan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I commend each person in Ireland who is helping those fleeing the war in Ukraine. We will never know the true extent of the efforts of volunteers around the country but they are at work everywhere and I thank all of them. We are sorely aware, however, that injustice and suffering continue the world over. In Afghanistan last week, the Taliban reneged on a promise to allow girls to attend secondary school, with thousands of girls turned away from school gates. One girl, who spoke to the Afghan news outlet TOLOnews, burst into tears as she described being "turned away after waiting 186 days - she had counted - for school to resume. She asked: "What is our crime? That we are girls?"

On the other side of the world, a so-called liberal democracy shows similar signs of authoritarian leanings. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau received a wake-up call in the European Parliament last week when he addressed it on the topic of growing threats to democracy and failed to count himself among those threats. Last month, I spoke about Mr. Trudeau being the first Prime Minister in Canada's history to invoke the powers of the Emergencies Act, which were used to violently quell a legitimate protest. At the European Parliament session, it was stated that the world had watched how, under the quasi-liberal boot of Trudeau, women were trampled underfoot by horses and how the bank accounts of single parents were frozen so they could not pay for their children's education and medicine, for utilities or make mortgage repayments. I received, as I am sure many colleagues have, correspondence from an Irish citizen living in Canada.This one is from Paraic, who is originally from Connemara. It states:

I cannot board a plane in Canada to fly to Ireland because I am not vaccinated. The Government of Canada has set a mandate that states that no unvaccinated person shall board a plane, train or bus, whether to travel domestically or internationally. I believe it is the only country in the western world that has imposed this sanction on the unvaccinated population. Although I was able to be medically exempt from this by my doctor because of a PCR test, the parameters that the Canadian Federal Government set out to the no-travel rule does not allow me, and likely does not include most people. The Canadian Government has set the following terms as to what is not an emergency and urgent travel. These are: travel to visit family, attending weddings, funerals and attending to personal matters, such as buying a house, seeing or caring or sick family members, discretionary travel, such as for a vacation or recreation and situations where activity can be held virtually.

These are our citizens who are locked up in another country and who cannot travel back to their own native homes. This requires immediate intervention by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Coveney. I ask the Acting Chair to bear with me as I am nearly finished.