Dáil observes minute’s silence for Nice attack victims

TDs stood and observed a minute’s silence in the Dáil as a mark of respect after tributes were paid to the victims of last week’s terror attack in Nice in which 84 people died.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny told the House that “Ireland stands by France”.

Mr Kenny said “each of these attacks has been the same in its dreadful consequences, but each had its own distinctly horrific features. People were killed for who they were - journalists or Jews”.

“In each case they have been killed as they enjoyed and because they enjoyed the freedoms of our western civilisation,” he added.

Mr Kenny said “the innocent faces of the youngest faces are deeply poignant but so too is the face of the 73-year-old grandmother, the first person to be killed. And in a bitter irony she was only one of many Muslims killed by someone purporting to act in the name of Islam.

“Ireland stands by France. France is a great place, the birthplace of Republicanism and of universal human rights. These values are more precious than ever in our turbulent and dangerous world that must be protected.”

‘Solidarity’

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the attack on Nice was the seventh major attack on the people of France in recent years.

“We stand in solidarity with the people of France and we stand in solidarity with the great principles of liberty, equality, fraternity which even after Nice will always define July 14th.

Mr Martin said “the democratic will cannot be defenceless in the face of those seeking to destroy it”.

But Europe “is a continent defined by respect for democracy and human rights beyond any other region in the world”, he said.

“France must not stop being France because of these attacks and Europe must not stop being Europe because that is exactly what the terrorists want.”

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams expressed his party's condolences and also condemned the attempted military coup in Turkey at the weekend.

He said “it’s important that a message be sent from the Dáil that the Turkish government must act with restraint and within the rule of law”.

Labour leader Brendan Howlin said that the unity of the French nation would stand firm "in the face of this act of barbarism".

He said these attacks “are assaults on our way of life” and are aimed at our liberty, our democracy. “I the fact of such attacks we stand together in solidarity. France’s values are our values.”

‘Unjustifiable’

Speaking on behalf of People Before Profit and the Anti-Austerity Alliance, Richard Boyd Barrett said the actions that claimed the lives of those who were "massacred" were "utterly despicable, unconscionable and unjustifiable".

He said they had to address the “deep sense of alienation and injustice that is felt by many people in North Africa and the Middle East and the North African and Muslim community in France.

“That is not in any way to provide justification for this horrific attack but it is to recognise that alienation and sense of frustration and injustice can be a seedbed for the sort of hatred we saw unleashed in Nice.”

Independents 4 Change TD Mick Wallace described the attack as an unthinkable act on the part of a madman.

“I find it sad that just before this madman struck there had been an aerial display of French fighter planes but all the fighter planes in France couldn’t stop him. And I don’t think all the nuclear power in France could stop him.”

Social Democrats TD Róisín Shortall, Independent Minister of State Finian McGrath, Independent TD Mattie McGrath, and Green Party leader Eamon Ryan also expressed their sympathies before the House stood for a minute's silence.