Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I support the Government's amendment. My first observation relates to the manner in which the circumstances of recent days emerged among the public. According to what I have read, a cleaner was on board the plane and was busy performing his or her duties, may have seen an individual who was a prisoner and may have reported it to an authority who then brought it to the attention of the Government. That is an extraordinary set of facts if we are to say that rendition is occurring through Irish airports. If the US Government is giving us assurances that it is not doing this and is happy to allow ordinary members of the public working as cleaners onto the planes, it would be grossly negligent of the US if it was trying to perpetuate a cover up. That amazing set of facts gives the lie to the possibility of a cover-up on the part of the American authorities in respect of what they are doing at Shannon.

My second observation is that during the past three weeks the House has been caught up in an interesting debate that was always well disciplined in terms of establishing a distinction between the political and the legal. I speak of the debate we have had on statutory rape. We had been careful to make that distinction to ensure the Oireachtas did not interfere with the Judiciary, yet in this debate we have gone back to the old ways of not making those distinctions as clear as they should be.

For example, the Minister confirmed that the Marty report did not hold any hearings. It did not connect with any authority in the Irish permanent representation in the Council of Europe, it did not give us an opportunity to put forward a point of view, and it carried out a straightforward investigation without the normal legal procedures of allowing the other side to give its view before making a legal finding. Therefore, the Marty report, for good or bad, is a political statement. It is not a legal finding, nor could it ever be, yet the phrase used to describe Ireland's position in regard to Shannon is "negligent collusion" which, to the ordinary member of the public, gives the impression of a legal finding, as if it had been the product of a thorough legal investigation where fair procedures were carried out.

We are dealing with international law. The criticism I have made of the US Government in the past, for what it is worth, is that the US has stood down from obligations in international law, starting from the UN and through many different treaties, including the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty and the International Criminal Court. While the US continues to operate outside international law, there is a difficulty in applying international legal standards. Therefore, we must operate on the basis of different procedures. Many European countries have bought into the US standing down. Ireland is not one of those countries. We are a neutral country and we have never bought into that view. We have received assurances which I am confident we can stand over.

The debate is never about whether people have gone through that airport. It is a case of whether planes used at another time came through that airport subsequently or previously. Therefore, that brings us into what Senator Marty described as a spider's web of collusion. I do not believe that is the case.

Deputy Carey made the point that, while the international debate on terrorism is taking place, there is an obsession in the House with only one side of that debate which queries whether American tactics are appropriate or proportionate to the challenge it faces. There is little debate about how we suppress terrorism. There are people in this House who believe the US caused and perpetuated terrorism and that the manner in which the US is conducting its war on terrorism is morally worse than terrorism itself. There is no critical analysis of the causes of terrorism nor effort to assess how this State can contribute towards bringing terrorism to an end. It is unfortunate that the debate concentrates solely on those issues and not on the other side. We are very peripheral and marginal to the debate internationally about how terrorism will be dealt with. If one were to use a soccer analogy, we are up around the corner flag while the main game is taking place.

We need to remember that torture is illegal and unacceptable in any circumstance. It could not be legal in Ireland to have extraordinary rendition. We must do everything we can, whatever else the Council of Europe recommends. It merely described a set of facts and made no recommendations. We should look at any Council recommendations positively, and act upon them if necessary.

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