President Michael D Higgins has called on the United Nations Security Council to do more for the people of Gaza.
He said air dropping food in Gaza was not good enough and it "means the people who are very vulnerable, the lame, the old and the young cannot in fact get that food easily".
Speaking at the official opening of the Fleadh Cheoil in Wexford, he said: "I cannot really stand in a public venue and give a public speech and speak about our language when I see such incredible, incredible destruction of an entire people taking place on our television screens every evening."
He said the Secretary-General of the United Nations António Guterres should use the procedures of the UN Charter which he said are there to help the people of Gaza.
He said the Chapter VII procedure would allow Mr Guterres to seek to put together an international defence of a corridor to allow aid into the enclave.
He said it was "outrageous" that there were 6,000 trucks with enough food for three months waiting to get in to Gaza and that they are being blocked.
President Higgins also condemned footage released by Hamas of two emaciated Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian militant group in Gaza.
Hamas and its Islamic Jihad ally have recently released three clips showing captives Rom Braslavski and Evyatar David, who were seized during the 7 October 2023 attack on Israel that triggered the war.
In the footage shared by the Palestinian Islamist groups, 21-year-old Braslavski, a German-Israeli, and 24-year-old David both appear weak and malnourished.
The footage of Evyatar David showed him digging what he said in the staged video was his own grave, triggering particular outrage.
President Higgins said in a statement: "The presentation of the emaciated bodies of two hostages taken on 7 October (2023) is a shocking act of cruelty and reflects not only on those responsible for such actions but damages any cause to which they attach themselves.
"We are now in a position of seeing the nadir of human behaviour with images like these occurring at the same time as children are deprived of medicine and mothers are deprived of water and the necessary means of addressing malnutrition as they watch their children die.
"All of these actions must not just receive the opprobrium of the world, but must lead to practical actions that cannot wait until September to be addressed.
"I repeat the suggestion which I have made previously with regard to how Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter may provide a mechanism for ensuring safe access of aid."
This evening, Hamas said it would only allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to provide aid to Israeli hostages on the condition that humanitarian corridors are opened to Gaza.
"[We] are ready to respond positively [to] any request by the Red Cross to deliver food and medicine to enemy prisoners.
"However, we condition our acceptance on the opening of humanitarian corridors... for the passage of food and medicine... across all areas of the Gaza Strip," Hamas's military wing wrote in a statement.
The response came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu requested that the ICRC help provide food to the hostages held in Gaza, and after the agency issued a "call to be granted access to the hostages" in a statement posted on X.
Six more die of hunger in Gaza
Meanwhile, six more people have died of starvation and malnutrition in Gaza over the past 24 hours, the Hamas-run health ministry said, underlining the enclave's humanitarian emergency.
It comes as Egyptian state TV said two trucks were set to make a rare delivery of fuel.
The new deaths raised the toll of those dying from what international humanitarian agencies say may be an unfolding famine to 175, including 93 children, since the war began, the ministry said.
Egypt's state-affiliated Al Qahera News TV said two trucks carrying 107 tons of diesel were set to enter Gaza, months after Israel severely restricted aid access to the enclave before easing it somewhat as starvation began to spread.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza's said fuel shortages have severely impaired hospital services, forcing doctors to focus on treating only critically ill or injured patients. There was no immediate confirmation whether the fuel trucks had entered Gaza.
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Fuel shipments have been rare since March, when Israel restricted the flow of aid and goods into the enclave in what it said was pressure on Hamas militants to free the remaining hostages they took in their October 2023 attack on Israel.
Israel blames Hamas for the suffering in Gaza but, in response to a rising international outcry, it announced steps last week to let more aid reach the population, including pausing fighting for part of the day in some areas, approving air drops and announcing protected routes for aid convoys.
United Nations agencies have said that airdrops of food are insufficient and that Israel must let in far more aid by land and open up access to the war-devastated territory where starvation has been spreading.
COGAT, the Israeli military agency that coordinates aid, said 35 trucks have entered Gaza since June, nearly all of them in July.
Looted aid trucks
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said nearly 1,600 aid trucks had arrived since Israel eased restrictions late in July. However, witnesses and Hamas sources said many of those trucks have been looted by desperate displaced people and armed gangs.
More than 700 trucks of fuel entered Gaza in January and February during a ceasefire before Israel broke it in March in a dispute over terms for extending it and resumed its major offensive.
Palestinian local health authorities said at least 40 people had been killed by Israeli gunfire and airstrikes across the coastal enclave today. Deaths included people trying to make their way to aid distribution points in southern and central areas of Gaza, Palestinian medics said.
Among those killed was a staff member of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, which said an Israeli strike at their headquarters in Khan Younis in southern Gaza ignited a fire on the first floor of the building.
The Gaza war began when Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and took 251 hostage in a cross-border attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, according to Israeli figures. Israel's air and ground war in densely populated Gaza has since killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to enclave health officials.
According to Israeli officials, 50 hostages now remain in Gaza, only 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
