Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements Dail Éireann — 2023-04-18 ============================================================ Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire My jaw nearly dropped when the Taoiseach said, after meeting President Biden, that he did not know what the world would do without the assistance he and the United States have provided to protect democracy and security around the world. When he made that amazing statement, I wonder if he knew about Joe Biden's record. Did he know, for example, that Joe Biden said that if Israel did not exist, the United States would have to invent it and that there was not that much difference between the policy of the United States and the policy of Israel, despite the war crimes, crimes against humanity and theft of land that Israel visits on the Palestinians? How did he contribute to world peace by doing an arms deal for billions of euro with the Saudi dictatorship to prosecute a murderous war against the people of Yemen? How did he contribute to world security by being the major advocate in the US Senate for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, which caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis? I cannot believe the Taoiseach or others could have made those statements. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-04-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:46+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-04-18