Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

You absolutely are, given I saved your skin earlier during the Commencement debate. On a serious note, it is nine days since the horrific Hamas attack. The scenes that are unfolding on our screens, phones and televisions and reported in newspapers are shocking in terms of the atrocities that have been committed, the children who have been murdered and the people who have been held hostage. Let us think about Gandhi's words "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind," and that is exactly what is happening at the moment.

We have all received a lot of emails. One of the most poignant emails that I have received, as I know many of us did, was from an 11-year-old boy called Rian Tighe, an Irish boy who lives in Portugal. He asked what is wrong with the world and said that boys and girls his age should be thinking about football or wanting to meet someone like Lionel Messi as opposed to seeing bombs and people being killed. The boy begged all of us to do what we could to ensure that peace would happen. That is a very important message from a young boy who cares about his peers who live in Gaza and Israel.

I want to raise section 39 workers.