Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Mr. O'Gorman said that "the world's politicians have miserably failed to protect those in greatest need". Is that all politicians - unelected politicians, elected politicians, independent politicians, those who have the audacity to form political parties or, even worse, to aspire to get into government and implement difficult programmes that try to reconcile the problem of refugees with the problems of housing at home? Is there anywhere in the world where a democratically elected government is doing the right thing, as far as Amnesty International is concerned? If this is Amnesty's audit of politicians in such absolutist terms, why would any young person want to go into politics? Why not just become a human rights activist? The latter seems to be a much safer, comfortable place to be than the place of elected members on this side of the committee who have to reconcile the balance when politicians, such as the former US President George W. Bush and the former British Prime Minister Mr. Blair, have the audacity to intervene on humanitarian grounds and completely destroy a fragile or stable dictatorship and unleash such chaos as we have seen in recent months. In Mr. O'Gorman's view, has any significant progress, on the ground as distinct from the ratification of certain treaties, been achieved by the post-Cold War settlement that points to a brighter future?