Mr. Conor O'Neill:

I think that is very fair. For the record and the avoidance of doubt, this is important. An issue raised sometimes is that the volume is low, so does it matter? Exactly the same thing was said about the ban that Ireland took the first step in Europe on implementing regarding trade with apartheid South Africa. There were people at the time who said that conflict was intractable and would never end and who asked what a bunch of working-class, mostly women shop stewards in a supermarket on the other side of the world were going to do about it. It was said the volume was too low and it would not matter. It did matter, though. When Nelson Mandela was freed from prison on Robben Island, he personally thanked the striking Dunnes Stores workers. When he died, they were flown to South Africa to attend his funeral. A street in Johannesburg is now named after Mary Manning. We reject the suggestion, therefore, that the impact here is purely symbolic; it is not.