Mark Daly (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the ambassador for his contribution. He outlined issues around the forgotten Irish in Britain and the organisations that look after them and the scale of this problem is growing every year. It was once proposed that those Irish living isolated lives in Britain, in terms of housing and communities that are no longer Irish in nature, could be brought back to Ireland. Is there any such proposal now? How much financial assistance do the forgotten Irish receive?

The ambassador skipped the issue of Scottish independence so I will not ask him to comment further but I have direct questions on other issues on which the ambassador may receive instructions from Dublin. The Dáil and Seanad passed motions on the Dublin and Monaghan bombings but have we requested those files and received a written response from the British Government?

The television programme "Panorama" on the BBC covered the admissions of some members of a British army unit that they were involved in shootings in Belfast. Was this raised at an official level and did we ask that the British Government seek convictions? I ask this because it was the first time there was an admission that a British Prime Minister was made aware of what was happening in the North. Downing Street correspondence from 1972 said "the Prime Minister thought it particularly important that it is envisaged, in paragraph seven of the note attached to your Secretary of State minutes, special care should be taken to operate within the law". This was after the Prime Minister was made aware of the activities of the undercover unit that shot unarmed civilians in Belfast. Did we do anything in response to the BBC "Panorama" programme?