Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I do not have a speaking slot on the budget later, I will comment on it briefly. I commend our negotiating team. It looks like a thoughtful budget. We have all known about the cost-of-living crisis for the past 18 months. The budget continues to support people exactly where it needs to, not only through increases in weekly payments to people who have no other income, but also through one-off universal payments to acknowledge that people are still struggling with their ESB bills, the petrol in their tanks and such things. As a parent who has three children in college, I am particularly mindful of the fees reduction and continued support for university fees. The increase in the student universal support Ireland, SUSI, grant is welcome for the hundreds of thousands who go to college every year. I welcome the rental tax credit and continued support for housing, which not only the Government, but the rest of the country knows is the single biggest issue facing the country, the continued investment of billions of euro and the continuation of some of the effective schemes that are helping people, such as first-time buyers - 400 per week, according to the statistics - to buy their homes. These are not just statistics. They are real families and real couples getting their first real house because of the supports provided by the State. I acknowledge the hard work that has been done in recent months and I hope things will get easier for people in the next year. The predictions are that inflation will start coming down. I hope people's wage increases will be larger than the increases in costs and things might get back to a little bit of what we used to think was normal before Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic and the Ukraine war.

I will touch on what Senator Dooley said. We are in the middle of reacting to the most horrific scenes we all witnessed at the weekend. The gratuitous violence and callous loss of life caused by terrorists is something to behold. I do not think I will ever be able to wrap my head around any reason for it. Despite the fact that many, including colleagues in this House and the other House, have sought to justify the actions of the weekend, there is no justification for violence, needless or not, in any situation. There is a genuine justification for the care of innocent people, including innocent Palestinians who do not support Hamas or any violence in their name, innocent Israelis and international people who are missing and being searched for. It is a horrendous situation. If there was ever a need for the international community to double down and genuinely show a serious intent to provide a solution to a situation that has gone on for far too long, and longer than I am alive, there is now. I welcome the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin's, statement this morning. We now need to see international leaders walking the walk and not just talking the talk.I wish them the very best.

Further to what has been said by my colleagues about what is happening in the Middle East, Hamas has been armed by God knows who. Clearly it is saying the Iranians were not a part of this attack and we must acknowledge that. Both Hamas and the Iranians have said it and we must acknowledge that. However, we are very quick to jump on other countries when something like what happened this horrible weekend happens, which is only the start. It has only started and my fear is that by the time Israel extends its defence and the right to defend its people, there will be nothing left of Gaza. It will be razed to the ground. We must start asking who is behind who in this because there are forces from the West and forces from the East and they are supporting both sides. Who pays the price? It is women, children and old people with Parkinson's disease being dragged off as hostages.

We must be real at some stage. I have been listening to talk about the need for peace talks in the Middle East since Adam was a boy and we have got nowhere. There is a little step forward and then four steps back and the thing gets worse and worse. Everybody who has a piece of this on his or her plate needs to come out and be honest. Israel has been supported by the West and I would not like to live in Israel where at any stage and time, rockets could come my way. However, not unlike Northern Ireland during the Troubles, people in communities tolerated these terrorists who were prepared to wage war on the other side, knowing that some of them would die as a result, that innocent people would die as a result of it. We saw how the IRA and Red Hand Commandos did deals to kill off each other. If I did not like you, I could get one of the Ulster Volunteer Force, UVF, guys to shoot you and in return, they would get a republican to shoot one of their guys. War is filthy. We have to question ourselves and we must be honest. Support Israel - yes - but is it justifiable to take out an entire apartment block because one apartment is inhabited by some guy from Hamas? We will never encourage the local population to turn against Hamas if we start destroying everything in the place. It is utterly inhuman to cut off fuel, water and food. I do not care how bad things are. Cutting off the basics for life is totally unacceptable. I support Israel's need to defend itself but I also support innocent women, children and old people who are suffering today in Gaza. We have to switch back on the power to live. We have to give them that. The Israeli army is big enough to go in and find everybody from Hamas and take them out if it wanted to. Do not kill innocent people.