Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

Yesterday, Members rightly spent time trying to find the truth behind the murder of the late solicitor, Pat Finucane. In the course of the exchange the Taoiseach mentioned comparisons, in terms of investigations, with Bloody Sunday in 1972 when 13 civilians were shot dead in Derry. I then read in The Irish Times that the military is investigating police allegations that soldiers shot dead a family of 11 in their home last week. The inquiry comes a day after a magazine published allegations that troops killed 15 civilians in another town last year. A criminal inquiry into those deaths was launched last week. The only difference is that the soldiers were not British but American and the families are in Iraq and not Derry or Belfast. Time magazine published accounts by townspeople to the effect that troops went on a rampage after a marine was killed by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad in November. The witness rejected an original US account that the 15 also died in the bomb blast. A young child stated: "I watched them shoot my grandfather first in the chest and then in the head, and then they killed my granny". The Time article states that accusations that US soldiers often kill civilians, including children, and that little disciplinary action has resulted in the few cases investigated, has aroused Iraqi anger since the invasion. In the light of that, will the Taoiseach agree it is stomach churning to read about the Minister for Transport, Deputy Martin Cullen, doing a nixer for the Minister for Defence by heading off with Irish troops to New York to "welcome back US troops from Iraq"?

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