International Developments: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown I will spend my time speaking about international law and global order, which has been the focus of some of the Minister's comments. Increasingly the talk we hear from leaders in our Government and from other European leaders is about the global order and the rules-based order. I am so frustrated with people essentially speaking out of both sides of their mouths. We cannot speak about global order without recognising that we are the global order. It does not just sit over there. It is us. We live and breathe it. We are the member states of the European Union and the nation states of our globe that make this order happen and maintain it through our actions. We need to wake up and realise the global order exists only when we enforce the standards of international law mar is é sin bunchloch na Náisiún Aontaithe, bunchloch an oird dhomhanda agus bunchloch na síochána. I would say this also relates, for example, to how we sign UN treaties. When we sign them they mean more than just pretty paperwork. They are what we sign up to and what we want to support and see maintained across our globe. All nations are responsible for international law and global order. International law exists because under the banner of the United Nations we have made it exist and it is crumbling because we have abandoned the universal standards of international law in Palestine, America and elsewhere because it was inconvenient, essentially. We are right back where we were 12 months ago with Trump and the threat of tariffs. At the time we warned about bullies and insulating the Irish economy and about Trump only respecting strength. We were warned about these things and we have seen and we saw a capitulating trade deal from the EU and months of humiliation of our leaders and diplomats, including on St. Patrick's Day when in the Oval Office in the White House our Taoiseach failed to call out the President of the United States when he said the European Union had been founded to attack the US. Our Taoiseach said nothing at that point. This is where we are ten months later because we are not upholding global law and we are not respecting international law. It seems we will simply bend over backwards to please him. I want to touch on some of the international developments that have been spoken about today, starting with Ukraine. I want to speak not only about the impact on civilians and Ukrainians here in Ireland. I welcome and commend the Government and the State for the incredible work being done. We also need to look at the humanitarian issues that people are facing within Ukraine. Humanitarian aid needs to increase to assist with this and make better the lives of the people who are living this war. In terms of Greenland I absolutely welcome that the EU is rallying around but it is another example of where international law seems to be applied when it is convenient. Where was the same outcry with Venezuela or Gaza and Trump's actions there, and the actions of despots across the globe who are breaking this law and flouting it consistently? In Palestine we have this so-called ceasefire under which people continue to die, the promises of aid that have not happened, the continued killings, the apartheid, the annexation of the West Bank, the banning of groups such as Doctors Without Borders and the destroying of UNRWA resources while we all look away. We speak about an age of impunity as if this impunity just happened one day. We created it by deciding the rules do not apply to our allies, our trade partners and our fellow Western countries. I know many others have referenced Mark Carney's remarks today and they are incredibly prescient. Here is what I think we need to do. I have a few suggestions that I think the Government needs to consider in international developments. I was so disappointed and gutted to see Ireland become a signatory to the letter recently asking for rollbacks on the ECHR. We have just criticised the UK for doing exactly this. We know how crucial the ECHR is to our Good Friday Agreement and to peace on this island yet we chose under the banner of migration, on which the Government is absolutely hell bent on being strong, to undermine the ECHR and join a group of European nations in doing so when others did not. Only 26 out of 46 are signatories to it did so. This is something I really want to see the Government move back on and stop attacking the ECHR under any banner. Do not abandon the triple lock. Do not push through the defence (amendment) Bill. Right now the triple lock is our connection to multilateralism, global order and the UN. I fully appreciate that the UN has issues and the UN Security Council has issues but the triple lock could be satisfied by the General Assembly and no effort has been made to do this. We must maintain this global order because us walking away and removing the triple lock is sending a very clear signal, not only to the UN but to all of the states across the globe, including small states that look to us for leadership and look to us for our leveraging in the United Nations and within the Security Council. We need to pass the occupied territories Bill in full, including services, now. It is long past the promise that it was supposed to be. We must reposition our relationship with the Trump Administration. I am not anti-American. I appreciate that our ties with America are crucial, and that we have diaspora there and trade links there, but the Trump Administration is going about its business, particularly in relation to foreign affairs but really in domestic affairs as well, in a way that we cannot support. We have to ask the difficult questions whereby we seriously consider who our allies are going forward. This is not business as usual. I do not accept it when Government spokespeople say they make no apology for protecting jobs. They should make an apology for protecting jobs when it is to support an Administration that is proving itself to be in the kind of mindset that Trump has, whereby he decides he wants to acquire something and goes after it. Essentially his support for peace in Ukraine has nothing to do with peace but is to do with the rare earth minerals he wants to get his paws on. Taking Maduro out of Venezuela is not about the regime that he is running but the oil that Venezuela holds. In Palestine he is still hell bent on developing a dystopian riviera. These are not things that can be considered business as usual. We have to start saying that the emperor has no clothes. --- 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/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-31T01:00:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21