Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Kitt, to the House and wish him well in his ministerial job. It is great to have him back in this House and I am sure he prefers to be sitting in the seat he is in rather than the one he was in when he was a Member of this House.

I wish to use this opportunity to refer to some foreign policy issues rather than focus directly on overseas development aid. I wish to refer specifically to the position of Iran. Senator Daly, who is present, met, as I did on a number of occasions, some representatives of the Iranian opposition recently. It is important to initiate a debate on what is happening in Iran. It is the forgotten state. We see the images of Iran broadcast on television but we do not realise what is happening behind those scenes. As with the Solidarnosc in Poland, we do not realise that there is also a democratic opposition in Iran which is not getting the opportunity to operate, function, spread its message and gain acceptance in the West.

My premise for raising what is happening in Iran is that we are dealing in a kid glove manner with Iran. I would like to record what is happening there, and we have talked about other countries previously. Iran is a state that supports terrorism. That is a reality and there is plenty of evidence to prove that. Iran has a list as long as my arm of abuses of human rights. This is well recognised and documented. I have seen photographs of the evidence of this and the lists of the people concerned. There is not the slightest doubt about that. Iran has been interfering most negatively and in a most mischievous fashion in the attempts to bring stability to Iraq. As we all know, Iran is pursuing nuclear weaponry.

The reason I raise this matter and ask the Minister of State to bring it to the attention of the Department is that the debate on this issue in the West is being presented as one of how do we deal with Iran. There seem to be two alternatives. One is that we appease the mullahs running the appalling regime there and the other, apparently, is military intervention — the disaster we saw happen next door in Iraq. We failed to have a timely discussion on Iraq. Many people wanted to have a debate, including Senator Ó Murchú, a dúirt a lán mar gheall ar an ábhar sin. Tá an rud céanna ag tarlú anois san Iaráin.

The reality is that it should be dealt with. Dealing with Iran is not a choice between appeasing the mullahs and military intervention, between war and appeasement. There is another way to deal with it, namely, there should be support for the pro-democratic, anti-fundamentalist opposition in or, I should say, to Iran, because opposition is not allowed to survive in that country. Those in opposition tend to be outside Iran around the world in various places putting forward their message.

If my contribution leaves the Minister of State with no other message than this one, I ask him to note it. The two groups which are doing this are the People's Mujahedin of Iran, the name of which will immediately put people's backs up because it sounds like a terrorist organisation, which it is anything but. It is a tolerant, progressive, democratic organisation that is opposed to terrorism, the regime of the mullahs and the current President of Iran. The other organisation is the National Council of Resistance of Iran. The leader of that group is a woman called Maryam Rajavi who had a huge meeting in Paris this year attended by tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Iranians from all over Europe and who has addressed various conferences in different parts of Europe.

The point I wish to make is that I give the House my word that these two groups, the People's Mujahedin of Iran and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, are tolerant, progressive and democratic. They are both proscribed organisations, are called terrorist organisations and are prevented from spreading their message. In doing this, we are giving sustenance to the fundamentalist, anti-democratic, oppressive and abusive regime that is in Iran.

I ask the Minister of State to look upon the opposition to Iran, reflected in the People's Mujahedin of Iran and the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as pro-democratic, supportive organisations doing the same work in the Middle East as Solidarnosc did in Poland 20 years ago. They deserve our support. We should be looking at Iran in terms of imposing sanctions on it until it begins to go the route of upholding human rights. There is no reason the same thing cannot happen in the Middle East as happened in eastern Europe. We need to have that optimistic view. We are talking about Persia, which dates back to the foundation of civilisation. Its people understand democracy and they need support. I ask the Minister of State to use his good offices to try to ensure Ireland takes an international view of having these two groups de-proscribed by the UN and by other international organisations.