Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

I find it extraordinary that a Government that prides itself on fiscal rectitude and the need for it does not have an estimate for the security and associated costs for the visits of the Queen and President Obama. Should we take it from the Minister's response that the Government has essentially given a blank cheque to the Garda and any other organs of the State involved in facilitating this visit suggesting they can have as much as they want and we will count the cost afterwards? At the same time vulnerable and impoverished sections of our society are pleading for some respite from austerity and cuts but are told again and again there is no money.

I welcome the Minister's comments about allowing and facilitating peaceful protests. In that regard I am somewhat bemused by the decision of Dublin City Council to ban posters advertising a planned demonstration by the Irish Anti-War Movement scheduled for this Sunday. The Irish Anti-War Movement will be holding a completely peaceful protest - as was the one we held last night - against US foreign policy on Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia and Bahrain where the US is financing regimes that are busy crushing democratic movements. Can the Minister use his offices to intervene with Dublin City Council and ask it that we be allowed to put up our posters advertising our peaceful anti-war demonstration and that that demonstration be allowed to proceed unhindered?

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