Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Ms McManus. We shared the same side of the table for many years. We are on different sides this time - me as the parliamentarian and her as the former Minister of State - but life goes on.

I downloaded the document. It is fascinating reading, but I did not complete it, as it was just too bulky. The two women who wrote the report did a spectacular job. Having said that, it is ironic that the group was informed by the innovative cross-learning initiative incorporating Northern Ireland and East Timor, yet Northern Ireland does not have a national action plan. We can take this matter up and have it corrected.

I have always been fascinated by how the West, including Ireland through Irish Aid and development programmes, treats the women of other cultures. The sexual connotation has been raised at these meetings by Senator Norris and Deputy Mitchell. How is the conflict between the cultures handled? It may be religious, given the culture of Catholicism in the missionaries that Irish Aid funds in the field. One hears of the concerns of homosexual communities and women in general. A lesbian explained to the committee that the churches were most unsympathetic. Right across the board in Africa, even in South Africa, gays and lesbians are discriminated against. We provide Christian aid through Irish Aid, Trócaire and the missionaries, which are supposedly protecting women not just in conflict areas, but in the development field. How is this religious content married with the cultural content of what we seem to argue is brutality, for example, female genital mutilation? Some of us could claim that the Jewish and Muslim practice of circumcision could be deemed barbaric in certain forms. In the Muslim community, there are the questions of the burka, the conflict in the Sahel region, women being put into pits to be stoned to death because of "adultery" and Sharia law, which is barbaric in some of its forms of interpretation.