Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
============================================================

Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

First, the Deputy's presentation of what I articulated here yesterday is wrong. I did not say I was not going to intervene in anything. Describing my position as a non-interventionist approach is wrong; it is false. Of course, he has to present his argument in that way to justify his subsequent comments. All political leaders - all of us - have an obligation in terms of this issue to be careful of what we say and how we say it if we want a resolution of it.
I do not accept the Deputy's comparison of what is happening in Gaza to the Northern Ireland of today. The situations are incomparable. The deprivation, the attacks, the killing of 75,000 people in Gaza, the continued stymying of aid going into Gaza - how can he compare that to what is happening in Northern Ireland today? There is no comparison. It is just ridiculous to make that comparison.
Northern Ireland has come a long way since the Good Friday Agreement, in which my party and others were centrally involved. Parity of esteem and respect for different traditions were the hallmark of that agreement. Many parades are held across Northern Ireland without any issues through local agreements and mediation between people who work and live together. The shared island initiative is breaking new ground in terms of connectivity between North and South, joint projects and programmes between different communities in music, biodiversity, climate and prevention of violence against women - the whole range of programmes we are now funding, with buy-in from all communities and all traditions.
What I said yesterday was that one single intervention cannot resolve this issue. We have to resolve it through a broader lens if we are serious about a future where different traditions can live together on this island and share the island in a reconciled way. Deputy Boyd Barrett has never publicly condemned Hamas for what happened on 7 October 2023. That is his view of life. Equally, he has referenced the PSNI in a negative way today. I want to pay tribute to the PSNI and to the Chief Constable, Jon Boutcher, for the manner in which he is managing this and trying to navigate it. The PSNI has been placed in a very difficult position. Part of the reform under the Good Friday Agreement was to have greater cross-community participation in the PSNI. There is a growing sense of "let's attack the PSNI and undermine the Patten reforms". We have to work to enhance the Patten reforms and ensure the PSNI continues on its journey of being truly cross-community in membership and so on. Progress has been made, but what I have witnessed and listened to in the past four or five days from quite a number of interlocutors is an attempt to undermine that process. We need to be very careful about that because it will end up in a very negative spiral into the future.
The Minister for foreign affairs met with the Secretary of State last evening. There was a series of exploratory talks between various groups and so on. Those talks will continue today. We have made very clear our view on the position of the Parades Commission. We do not agree with that decision, which is incomprehensible. However, we must now focus on a resolution, and talks are ongoing in that respect.

---

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/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30