I too extend a welcome to the McCracken family. I do not think there is a musician in Wexford who will not have visited the Dáil by the end of this term. It is lovely to have them here for International Women's Day. I wish to start by addressing the consular response. My colleague our spokesperson for foreign affairs, Senator Stephenson, spoke about her disappointment that for many people in these regions, the first contact they received was a link to a PayPal account asking for payment of €800 for a flight. Unfortunately, the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, who has left the Chamber, responded in the press today essentially criticising Senator Stephenson for not mentioning children and so on, which she did in her contribution in the Seanad this morning. She has been very comprehensive and clear on this. We do not have an issue with the payment per se. What we have an issue with are clear reports coming through that people are finding communication difficult. For some people, the first communication they have had is essentially asking people to pay €800 for a flight home from an active war zone before they board the flight. That is really quite horrifying right now. This is not just a consular crisis; this is a war zone suffering active bombardment. The Minister compared it to the Covid response and bringing people home during Covid. I am sorry; that is not the same. The only reason this is different is people are not being moved as they would normally be from a war zone by the Department of Defence. Instead, it is being managed in different ways. I appreciate that and, once again, it is not the concept or the principle of a fee that is the problem. It is the fact that people are being asked to pay it before they have even gotten the flight. In some cases, that will be a family with a number of people who have already paid for flights home and not flown and now they are being asked to put further money towards ensuring their own safety. I was on a television show with the same Minister of State on Tuesday of this week and my first message on this whole response was that I was still in shock that the Government was not condemning the attacks by the US and Israel. I still find it shocking. I welcome that the Minister has gone a little further today in her tone but the Government is stopping short of condemning what the US and Israel have done in breaking international law and essentially starting this conflict. We have just heard 15 minutes from Deputy Malcolm Byrne, who spoke about the horrific Iranian regime. None of us are denying that. He gave about 30 seconds of lip service to condemning the US and Israel. I find that disproportionate when what we are seeing on day five of this is a result of the attack by the US and Israel. I appreciate that Iran is engaged in grey-zone warfare, as he described it. I appreciate the oppressive regime that has been putting Iran's people down for so long and I certainly acknowledge that it is responsible for the deaths of thousands of protestors in the past few weeks but what the US and Israel have done is go to the tinderbox that is the Middle East and drop a lit match. We are all living with the repercussions of that. The Government not being able to outrightly and forthrightly condemn that is something I really have a huge issue with. When we were on that panel show together on Tuesday, the Minister of State focused on the consular response. I took that in good faith and said to him live on air that I acknowledged that the Government is prioritising vulnerable people, and I acknowledge the good work being done when that first charter flight was announced. I am genuinely dismayed that what followed from that is that those people are getting a link sent to them with a PayPal request for €800 before they even board the plane. The chain reaction that has been set off is under much discussion here today but I want us to remain steadfast in not forgetting where this started, which is the US and Israel choosing to do this, with motivations as yet unclear. The Trump Administration is jumping around between regime change and nuclear disarmament as it suits it. It does not have a plan. It never had a plan. Trump likes invading countries. That is clear a year and a bit into his term. It is also clear that he has found what he likes to do and is going to continue doing it. He has invaded seven different countries since his return to office: Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Nigeria and Somalia. He has indirectly been responsible for further attacks by Israel by providing it with arms and other countries too. He has also attacked ships in Latin American waters and, of course, on top of all of this, he has cut USAID so that any of the normal humanitarian, peacebuilding and peacekeeping responses we might expect to see in the wake of such a conflict are not going to happen because he has crippled the globe with his actions. All of these are weapons of mass distraction to avert our eyes here in Ireland and domestically in the US from his domestic failings, his tanking popularity and the atrocities he is levying across our world. We cannot forget where this is coming from. We can absolutely condemn the Iranian regime and the fact that it has retaliated with the strikes it is carrying out across multiple countries within the region and further afield but we cannot forget where it came from. This Government must condemn that. In condemning it, what the Government would be doing is saying that it respects rules-based order and multilateralism and that when somebody breaks that rules-based order, whether they are friend or foe, we condemn it. That is what multilateralism is. That is what respect for a global rules-based order is. We do not pick and choose when we decide to condemn the breaking of international law; we do it consistently so that it means something. Multilateralism is a proactive position. It is not something we do passively. We live it and breathe it. We exercise our membership of both the European Union and the United Nations through practising the condemnation of the breaking of international law and supporting those countries that are victims of it. Neutrality is also a proactive position. I raise this now as many will do during these statements because the current incursion by this Government into our neutrality has been to chip away at it for years. What the Government is trying to do with this defence legislation passing through the Houses at the moment is put the final nail in the coffin of our neutrality by removing the triple lock. The triple lock was the reason we were not engaged in the Iraq war a couple of decades ago and the removal of the triple lock will mean that we do have that same guard-rail against this increasingly volatile world. That is why the triple lock is so important and why we have to double down on it now. We are proud of our long history of commitment to peace and our moral compass in a world where a powerful few are increasingly trying to oppress the many. We are proud of what we have achieved through diplomacy, peacekeeping and neutrality. Our leaders are being pushed into this and being pushed to back away from our neutrality by lobbyists for big weapons company. More wars mean more profits. Our triple lock on peace stands in their way. Our Government has a choice. It can stand up to the arms industry and fight for a world where co-operation, safety and peace flourish or it can give in, putting us, our children, grandchildren and our neighbours across Europe at greater risk of violence and danger. Irish peacekeepers are known across the globe for bringing safety, stability and hope. We can remain strong because we refuse to surrender to pressure from arms corporations that profit from violence. The triple lock is our guarantee to that. Most people in Ireland agree that our position on peacekeeping and neutrality makes us stronger. Keeping the triple lock intact by stopping the defence (amendment) Bill is the only way we can truly copper-fasten our commitment to peace and basically triple lock our future in this increasingly volatile world.

Sentiment score: 0.03