Mr. Michael Culbert:

I will refer to the points that were made earlier and give some clarification from my knowledge base. I have met US Embassy staff here in Dublin and consulate staff in Belfast on several occasions. They have washed their hands of this issue. They just ask us what they can do. They speak about the US Department of Homeland Security just as they used to speak about the US State Department. I suppose the baseline is that the Americans can let who they want into their country. The angle from which this is being chased by me and by others within the republican family involves asking certain questions. How do the Americans know? Who is supplying them with information? We can see how they might know about us because when we are filling in visa applications, we have to tick a box indicating that we are former prisoners, but if my wife is going to America how do they know to stop her? At the moment, we are pursuing the British through the information commissioner. We want to know what the process is. What is the legal position if they tell the Americans about us? America does not stop Vietnamese or Japanese former activists, or Germans or Italians who fought wars against the Americans, from entering the US. What have the Americans got against us? I could go to London tomorrow, but the British Government tells the Americans not to let me into America. There is an amazing irony about that. I am okay to go to London, but I am not allowed into New York. That is the situation in the American context. They seem to be quite powerless to exert change.

Various things have happened in this Legislature. The taxi legislation that was introduced a year or so ago reflected the legislation that had been introduced in the North, which militates against people being employed as special advisers. In the North, it was directed against political ex-prisoners. We were not able to get that changed. Sinn Féin argued against it, but there was a lobby and it was pushed through. I can understand the climate because the media up there has us as the guys with the black hats and everybody else as the people with the white hats. We are depicted as the cause of the problems on the island of Ireland.

That is the way is and that is the way the media portrays it. The taxi Bill was passed here and this bad Bill was passed in the north of Ireland, which mitigates against the political ex-prisoner community who both Governments agreed should be assisted into employment. It mitigates against us because other powers are at play and the structures of employment, both North and South, are such that former political prisoners find it difficult to get work in any event and where they can get it is narrowed down to particular areas of work. Taxi driving is one such area and other major areas of employment for them in the North are as door staff or doing casual work. Legislation is operating against them, which we are working to address. To summarise, our problem is that the Good Friday Agreement did not bring about legislation to expunge the prison records related to the conflict. The war is not over legally. That is the problem.

A question was asked about Maghaberry Prison. I visit it not as a casual visitor, but as part of the Sinn Féin delegation. Myself, Raymond McCartney and Carál Ní Chuilín visit it as part of a delegation to see what the situation is there. We do that because we have a fair working knowledge, as we are all former political prisoners. We know quite a number of the prison staff. We know the governors in the jail and we go in to speak with the prisoners to see how the conditions are. Unfortunately, the prisoners do not really talk to us. I referred to this earlier, when I said that we have sold out in the war. The prisoners are a little hostile towards us but some of them talk to us and some of us ask if we can assist in the betterment of conditions there. The reason we go there is that we want to ensure, at the bare minimum, that there are humane reasonable conditions for people who have to spend their time there and that they are not getting the treatment we got for years within the prison. I wanted to mention that point about the prison.

I have supplied the committee with a full list of the conditions but the summary title of what mitigates against the political ex-prisoner community is the provision of goods and services. It could be home insurance, service in a restaurant, travel to the United States, car insurance or employment. We can be legally discriminated against because of a decision made in the British House of Lords within the northern jurisdiction. I sat in the British House of Lords about six years ago. Our case was assisted in terms of funding by the Equality Commission in the North. We lost the case because three out of the five judges decided we were on a par with the Nazis, and, as it was put to us, how could one expect a survivor of the camps in Germany or wherever else they were to be treated on an equal basis as someone who was a worker in the camp as a Nazi. That is how the judges referred to me as I sat there sitting there listening to that. I understand people might not like me and might not like the actions I took, but I do not consider myself that. That was the justification given by the British judges for allowing us to continue to be discriminated against within the British jurisdiction. It is not as bad here but it is bad enough when that taxi Bill could be introduced.