Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

It is important to recognise that those funds that have gone missing, have done so at the level of the banking system. In the oil for food programme, it was not the persons who were distributing the food in Iraq that were involved in fraud but those contracted to supply the food. It is the same on the construction side. Again, international trading companies defrauded the most vulnerable of the vulnerable.

Mr. Allawi, the former Prime Minister of Iraq, told the BBC, "We are losing each day an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is". The destruction of the Shi'ite mosque in Samarra was followed by the destruction of other mosques. Is it not clear that Iraq is at the edge, if not in, a civil war? Is that not indicated by the talks taking place between the US and Iranian authorities on how to construct a Shi'ite consensus? If that happens, it will lead to the further exclusion of the Sunni population in Iraq. Is there any basis for assuming a unitary state in Iraq will remain? Current talks indicate a division on a religious basis. Will the Minister agree that the loss of 50 to 60 civilian lives every day is an indication that the situation has deteriorated into a civil conflict?

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