Niall Ó Donnghaile (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I agree fully with Senator Clonan's remarks and especially his closing ones. I assure him of my own support for his work in the House in highlighting, and I hope addressing, those issues. I want to again ask the Government to move the Bill on holding a referendum that would extend the vote to Irish citizens outside the State in presidential elections. Members will know this is a long-term call that has been made since well before my time in the Oireachtas, and it has been led by civic society in the North but also by diaspora groups and networks throughout the world. It is also a programme for Government commitment, and the Government said just a number of months ago that it planned to hold that referendum before its term ends. If it is serious about that, I encourage it to introduce this legislation, whether in this House or the Lower House. There is nothing negative or regressive about enfranchising citizens with the most basic of entitlements, and that is an entitlement to vote for the President.

I always find it deeply frustrating when, every St. Patrick's Day, Government representatives travel the world and rightly acknowledge our diaspora and encourage further investment from diaspora networks around the world, yet will not enfranchise them with that vote, when they have the ability and the opportunity to do so. I again call for that legislation to be moved.

Alongside that, given the pandemic and everything else, we have not had statements from the Minister with responsibility for the diaspora in this House in this Seanad. I believe it would be timely, right and appropriate that we would hear about supports for our diaspora community, particularly older and more vulnerable Irish citizens, as communities emerge from isolation and from the pandemic. Diaspora networks and community centres are vital in the work they do and we support them. I would like to hear what the Government is doing in that regard.

In closing, I call for statements on Palestine. I attended a very hard-hitting briefing hosted by Senator Frances Black yesterday, with Hagai El-Ad, who is the executive director of B’Tselem, Israel's premier human rights organisation, and Raji Sourani, who is a director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend all of it. We say very often in regard to Palestine and the apartheid regime that is being implemented against Palestinians that we could not help but be moved, but there is a part of me that is tired of being moved about this and tired of having to extend my sympathies and solidarity. As individual parliamentarians but, more importantly, collectively, as an Oireachtas, and in particular with the Government’s position on the UN Security Council and the limited time it has left, we want to hear from the Minister for Foreign Affairs what the Government is doing to support Palestinians who are suffering and enduring apartheid. We want to hear what it is doing to challenge the brutality of the Israeli regime on the world stage, when it is so flagrantly implementing that apartheid regime and so flagrantly in breach of international law and all accepted conventions. I call for that and I have no doubt Senator Black will elaborate on that.