Mr. David Matas:

Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan asked if there had been any progress. There has been, both in China and abroad. Mr. Gutmann mentioned four countries which have enacted legislation, and that is some progress. There are other signs of progress also. Within China, legislation has been enacted which made promises, and gave priority to locals. The trouble is that it has not solved the problem and it has not been comprehensive. Before there was nothing, and now there is something, but we still have the problem. Mr. Gutmann answered the question about advertising. On the role of international organisations on international crime, the Council of Europe has come up with a treaty and the World Health Organisation has stated some principles. The UN rapporteur on torture and religious intolerance has put questions to China at the UN committee against torture, and asked China to conduct an international investigation. Generally, when one is dealing with international crime, there is a legal principle of complementarity which means that states should do it locally first. I do not think that we should be relying entirely on international organisations to deal with this issue. The first line of defence for international crime should be states rather than international organisations.

On the role of international medical organisations, the transplantation societies developed a couple of good policies, one on China and another on sourcing organs from prisoners, but the first line of defence should be a national transplantation society. What I see with national transplantation societies is that their ethical systems are underdeveloped to deal with this issue. They do not deal comprehensively with transplant tourism. Those need to be developed.

Deputy Crowe's question about the onus is an important one. The onus should be first on China to explain its source of organs and anyone dealing with China should be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that its source of organs is proper. That is not now the case, rather there is much wilful blindness, which is a problem.

On how a ban on travel would work, I am not in favour of putting patients in jail. What one needs to do is get at the brokers and advertising. This is a point that Senator McFadden made, that there has to be as much public education as possible. A number of city councils in Ireland have passed resolutions on this which is very useful in public education. The health Ministry could be doing more and the foreign Ministry could do more about alerting people about what happens.

Again, the profession could be alerting people more. How many doctors tell their patients that if they go to China there is a risk that somebody will be killed for his or her organs?

On the question of whether the Red Cross visits prisoners in jail, the answer is that they are not allowed to do so. At one time a Chinese official said they could, but when the Red Cross tried to arrange a visit it was not allowed. In regard to legal action against a British firm, I am a lawyer so I cannot answer that question. The problem is that legislation that would prevent something like this happening locally is not extraterritorial in effect. What Ireland, Britain and other countries need to do is put in place legislation that allows for extraterritorial rights such that they can impact upon things that locals are doing outside of the country.