Pat Breen (Clare, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We will certainly keep a close eye on the meeting scheduled for early 2015. We will take note of the delegates' comments today and contact the Minister and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to highlight the very serious issues facing Guatemala.

It is important that the EU takes an interest. The ambassador in Guatemala is well aware of these issues. We will ask our Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to highlight this issue at the highest level.

In this committee's capacity as the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, we intend to highlight this issue at our meetings with our colleagues from the 28 member states who serve on foreign affairs committees. Yesterday, a member of this committee attended a meeting on my behalf - I was unable to attend - to discuss the Balkans. It is hoped that the new high representative and the EU committee would hold a meeting to discuss human rights issues in Latin America.

I thank the delegates most sincerely for their attendance today. I thank Niall O'Keeffe who is in charge of human rights issues with Trócaire and Ms Blanca Blanco, Trócaire country director for Guatemala. We appreciate very much the work of Trócaire in Colombia which I saw for myself when I visited that country a number of years ago with our now President of Ireland, Michael D. Higgins, who was a member of the committee at the time. That meeting was organised by Sally O'Neill and she travelled with us to Colombia. It was a very valuable visit because as a result we are still dealing with issues relating to Colombia because the members who travelled there were well aware of the human rights situation. I am pleased to report that the situation has improved in Colombia and we would like a similar situation to come about in Guatemala where there is a real issue with human rights. It is up to us as parliamentarians and to the Government to highlight these issues and to ensure that the people of Guatemala are not subject to killings and other punishments which they are forced to endure as a consequence of corruption and the drugs trade.

I thank our special witness, Dr. Claudia Paz y Paz Bailey for coming before the committee and highlighting this issue for us. I thank her for her work when she was the Attorney General of Guatemala. I wish her well in her career as a lecturer in Georgetown University and I hope she will make a return visit to this country very soon. I thank her for the written submission and presentation. Members of the committee who are unavoidably absent from this meeting will have read the written submission and presentation. I am sure the committee will return to considering the very serious human rights situation in Guatemala.