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

Quite simply - this is what I believe Margaretta D'Arcy would want to convey to the Minister - the Minister would not have to spend €17 million if the Government stopped facilitating the US military machine at Shannon Airport and stopped facilitating CIA aircraft that are involved in the illegal torture and kidnapping of persons.

Margaretta is acting also on the principle of the Nuremburg judgments, with which the Minister may be familiar, arising out of the trials of Nazi war criminals and the obscenities they inflicted on the Jewish people and other innocent victims of Nazi horror, which stated that citizens of any state were obliged to break the laws of their own state if they believed it was preventing a greater crime. It is precisely on that basis that Margaretta D'Arcy has acted.

Is the Minister really saying there is nothing he can do about an elderly 79-year-old woman languishing in prison on the basis of an act of conscience for doing something similar to what Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi would have done? Do we want to be the type of state that would have imprisoned Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi? We are, as long as Margaretta D'Arcy languishes in prison.

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