Ms Catherine Heaney:

On the question of what is next, Deputy Martin, who was Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time, called for an international, independent inquiry from day one. To get that at a UN level, what we would require is the co-operation of the Bolivian authorities. In many ways we keep getting stuck. If the case clears from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights then that court hearing will be vital as a forum. It is not a paper court, like the European Court of Human Rights. It is an actual physical court, where there is testimony and witness statements. In terms of documenting what happened that is going to be a really important forum. We are confident that will happen, although much more slowly than we had originally anticipated.

To go back to some earlier questions, such as the possibility of the meetings that we were promised last year being rescheduled, we have low confidence in the system, but perhaps if the question was posed by a different forum it would be possible. A few years ago former MEP, Mr. Gay Mitchell, was on the European Parliament's Committee on Development, the sub-committee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. A huge amount of Bolivia's aid actually comes through Europe. It is a Spanish speaking country and there are strong connections with the Spanish Government. Mr. Mitchell went carried out reconnaissance before the new round of development aid was agreed for Bolivia and he made it his business to meet quite a number of politicians and asked hard questions and he became very engaged in the case. I think that there is still more political advocacy to be done.

On the evidence of the prosecutor, Marcelo Soza, we travelled to Brazil and all this travel has been funded by ourselves. We travelled for two days to Brasilia, arriving in the early hours of Saturday and leaving on the Monday. We met Mr. Soza and recorded all his testimony, so we have that on record, on tape. I also took extensive notes at the meeting. He also shared the hard drives of his computer with us, so we downloaded those and brought it back. That showed evidence that he claimed had been tampered with, evidence that had been created post-event and placed. He gave us a huge amount of information, and he also wrote a letter and signed it to say that he would be happy for this to be presented to any forum of the Irish Government, the European Parliament or indeed any other international body. That is available.