An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Gerard P. Craughwell (IND), Labour Panel It is not often that I compliment the Government. In light of the current crisis in the Middle East, however, I have to hand it to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Defence for organising to get an aircraft to Oman to bring people home. I appreciate that people will have to travel for many hours to get to that aircraft and that it will be difficult for those who are unwell to have to take a six- or eight-hour bus journey to Oman in order to get home. There are some green shoots with respect to flights. Some flights are getting out of Abu Dhabi and places like that, but they are very few and far between. I should be in Cyprus at a defence conference this week, but that country's airspace has been closed. Given Israel's incursions into Lebanon, I have had some questions this morning, particularly from my hometown and that of the Leader, about the safety of Irish troops in Lebanon. Israel has issued instructions to people to vacate their properties in parts of Lebanon. --- 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/seanad/2026-03-04/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-03-04