Defence Forces
Dail Éireann — 2024-10-17
============================================================

Duncan Smith (LAB), Dublin Fingal

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. We have all been ranging from disappointment to being aghast in this country at the continued support for Israel, either militarily or politically, over the past year as its massively disproportionate response to the attacks on 7 October continues to bring death and destruction for the people of Gaza and now Lebanon. If the burning of people alive in the Al-Aqsa hospital and all the other atrocities were not going to kick the western allies of Israel into action, then maybe attacks on UN peacekeeping forces might do that. However, it seems Israel is operating without a leash and with no brakes on its atrocities. Ireland has a unique role to play, or a near-unique role, to push our western allies into cracking down hard on Israel, bring it into the multilateral system and, ultimately, stop the violence and genocide.

---

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/2024-10-17/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:22+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-10-17