After nearly two years of slaughter, destruction and devastation in Gaza, the EU has finally run out of excuses for inaction. A review of the EU-Israel Association Agreement has finally been authorised. I welcome the Government's support for it. How long is this review going to last? The Israeli state is not just engaged in an openly genocidal campaign in Gaza; Israeli Government officials are now boasting about it. The Taoiseach mentioned Minister Smotrich earlier and I would like to quote him:

We are disassembling Gaza, and leaving it as piles of rubble, with total destruction [which has] no precedent globally. And the world isn't stopping us.

Netanyahu praised these comments. His Government has abandoned all humanity. Its clear policy is to starve, murder and maim Palestinians in Gaza before ethnically cleansing any survivors. What is the EU waiting for? What further evidence does it need? When will we see sanctions and Israel treated like a pariah state run by war criminals?

What we have witnessed in the past 24 hours is welcome but it is too late in some respects. There has been a division of opinion among member states in respect of this issue for quite some time. It is quite historic as the Deputy knows. Not everybody agrees with Ireland. We have a number of like-minded states, such as Slovenia and Spain, and Belgium to a lesser degree, which has a coalition government. There is a really broad strand of opinion in respect of the Middle East, some of it historic in respect of what happened in regard to the Shoah and so on. That has informed some countries' perspectives on this. In our view that historic prism has given Israel a latitude that has created the most appalling death and destruction. I hope now that in the context of the Israeli-EU agreement, we could have a suspension of that pending the review.