Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Anybody is at risk of persecution if he or she is sent back to a country that is absolutely ravaged by war, internal strife, war lords and other evils. The Minister for Foreign Affairs was in the United States recently where he implored the United States Government for leave for some tens of thousands of our fellow citizens to remain in the US on human compassion grounds. I support that request. Those citizens should not be forced to come back here when they have made new lives for themselves in the US and they should be allowed to stay. Can we then not give to a few hundred people, who would be forced back to a much different situation than the Irish coming back here, leave to remain here and to make a new life, in the interests of human rights? As a further contribution to human rights for the Afghanis and everyone else, it is incumbent on the Taoiseach to investigate the CIA planes that have been using Shannon on their way to Guantanamo or Afghanistan. My last word on Afghanistan is that any country that tolerates secret CIA prisons where torture is practised is not a country to which this State should deport people or to which we should or send anybody back.

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