Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I acknowledge the role of the Taoiseach and all those who facilitated and worked for this week's development. Speaking in the national Parliament in the week that the Provisional movement has verifiably put beyond use its deadly arsenal of weapons, we should not forget the many victims of those weapons — the people who were shot, blown up or maimed, and those who lost loved ones, family members, and friends. Nor should we forget the communities that have been forced to cower in the shadow of the gunman and the baseball bat for almost 30 years.

We should not forget either that the greater number of victims in that conflict were victims of the illegal body whose loss of arms we are now to celebrate, or that the greater number of victims came from within its own community, which the IRA claimed to defend. I was horrified to be told today that a television journalist had reported — if he did, I did not see it — that Gerry Adams had been greeted like Mahatma Gandhi at the National Ploughing Championships yesterday. That did not happen; it is a reckless use of language and a disservice to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, apart from anything else.

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