Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

The images we see coming from Gaza this week are horrific. It is difficult to know how to respond to the humanitarian disaster unfolding before our eyes. While we watch in horror, hospitals in Gaza are running out of food, water and electricity are running out and the health system has effectively collapsed. One area in which Ireland can have influence is by using our influence at an EU level to try to negotiate that anybody who requires urgent medical assistance, including pregnant women and premature babies, gets humanitarian evacuation from Gaza. According to the UN, there are 130 premature infants dependent on incubators that require electricity, which is running out in Gaza hospitals. We do not have time. This is a race against time to save those babies. There are also 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza who are caught up in the conflict, and 5,500 of them are due to deliver in the next 30 days.

We are facing extreme challenges and the weight of those challenges is massive. What we can do is try to ensure, at an immediate level, that people who need urgent access to medical assistance are granted humanitarian evacuation. I ask the Acting Leader, in her capacity as a member of Fianna Fáil and a member of this Government, to speak to the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and ask him to try to raise at EU level the issue of basic humanitarian evacuation for people who need immediate assistance, including those 120 babies who are dependent on incubators.