Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I will speak about something that has already come from this side of the Chamber today. It relates to what we saw this week. On Monday night, when we were all out enjoying St. Patrick's Day or returning from our celebrations, we heard that Israel had broken the fragile ceasefire in Gaza. Once again, we saw images of the complete horror of these bombings on our social media and newsfeeds. We saw the carpet bombing of men, women and children. As of this morning, the Palestinian Embassy was talking about 104, but we heard earlier that 1,000 civilians have been killed. Many others have been injured and people are still trapped under rubble.

I am lost for words. The horror is endless. What do we do, as an international community and as a country, when this is happening repeatedly? What do you say to your children when they ask why this is happening? Do we consider ourselves to live in an equal society? Are we all equal in this room and across this world? Are we human beings? Do we have humanity? How can we continue to see this and yet do nothing?The Irish Government has used good words but there has not been enough action. We have the occupied territories Bill but it has been at Cabinet level since 2020. There is no reason we should not be passing it. This is the bare minimum.

I also support Senator Black when she spoke about the IHRA definition. We need a debate on that. We cannot accept that as fact in the Government programme. That is not the way we should be leading human rights dialogue as a country.

Humanitarian aid has been blocked from hundreds of thousands of people. They cannot eat, they do not have safe drinking water and they have nowhere to rest their heads at night. This is going to cause decades of intergenerational trauma in the Middle East and more broadly. We cannot accept this and we have to have a debate about what more we can actually do as a country. We need to take action. We need more than just words.