Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)

The Tánaiste might give us some timelines in respect of the evaluation that he spoke of. It is important that this is not used as a political football and that we approach it in a mature way. There are some examples that take us by surprise. Last month, my constituency colleague seemed to come under some sort of misinformation attack from outside the State. A report came in that the Minister for public expenditure, Deputy Donohoe, had given assurances to the Israeli State in 2019 in respect of the occupied territories Bill. I found that very shocking, as did many people in Irish society. Paschal Donohoe rightly said he did not have that meeting. Does that not raise more questions than answers? Who did have the meeting, then? This was a high-level meeting. The Israeli department of justice said it had been given assurances. Are we not going to ask what happened there? At a time when our election process is about to get under way, we have a Minister for public expenditure who had to answer questions from the media. Have we had diplomatic engagements with the Israeli Government asking why such a false statement exists in its archives? In any other State this would be taken more seriously than it was here.

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