Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

As I said last week, Dr. Rice stated that Irish airports were not used in any way related to these issues, for planes or people or anything else. She has been absolutely, categorically clear that Irish airports were not used. Her reply was re-stated through the Embassy last week. On the question of the Council of Europe investigation, it has made a number of recommendations and issued guidelines on which we would look positively. The rapporteur is Senator Dick Marty, who was appointed in November by the committee for legal affairs and human rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He is expected to present his report to PACE this week, if he has not done so in recent days. That investigation is continuing in parallel with the Secretary General's questionnaire and the senator's original remit to examine secret prisons has since been extended to include rendition allegations. The Government is happy to co-operate in the conduct of that investigation if requested to do so. The parliamentary committee is also examining the issue and has set up a temporary committee to investigate allegations of the transport of illegally detained prisoners by the CIA in European countries. The committee has been mandated to collect and analyse information to find out whether the CIA or other intelligence services carried out abductions or extraordinary renditions, detentions and torture in secret sites. We will co-operate with any of those investigating bodies. The European Commission of Human Rights also asked for information.

There has been movement on the issue of climate change. However, I suggest to the Deputy that he put down a question to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who deals with such issues.

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