Dominic Hannigan (Meath East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Thank you very much, Mr. O'Gorman. Before asking my colleagues to contribute, I will make a few comments on the presentation. We were delighted to receive Mr. O'Gorman's comments on the EU Presidency to date, as well as his thoughts on what we should be doing for the remaining few months of the Presidency. Mr. O'Gorman is absolutely right concerning the need to talk further about the Copenhagen dilemma. It would certainly be a concern of many that some of the countries that joined the EU in the last ten years have failed to live up to their commitments. This is particularly so in the case of LGBT rights in some countries. I have a question on that matter. I wonder what Amnesty, as an international organisation is doing within these countries. It is important to make that point to us and other committees so that we can put pressure on from outside those countries. However, what is Amnesty International doing within some of these member states, not just on LGBT rights but also other rights that Amnesty International feels are not being respected?

I wish to inform members of the committee and the Amnesty International representatives that we will be having a session on enlargement at the COSAC plenary session. We have two speakers so far, one of which is Mr. Valentin Inzko, who is the UN's High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Sarajevo. The other speaker is Mr. Erwan Fouéré who was the EU's special representative in Macedonia. He was also the OSCE's representative in Transnistria. I am sure that both of them will be able to give us very enlightening views on the current state of play regarding enlargement from the Balkans region. I have no doubt that the suggested questions will be raised by members of this committee, some of whom will be attending that conference. It may also be appropriate for Amnesty International to invite people from other member states to make these comments through Amnesty's contacts there. It is nonetheless important that these matters are raised. Organisations such as Amnesty International are needed to educate the attendees from member states as to what questions they should be raising during that session.

I now call Senator Leyden who wanted to make a point.