Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

There will be some pressure on the Russian authorities regarding recent events. There has been a series of such incidents, and not only regarding journalists. Several high-powered members of the banking and business fraternity, among others, have been assassinated recently. The Presidency will be making a formal statement with unanimous support. I believe that it has already made two such statements. The incoming Presidency under the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, who met President Putin a few days ago, has also made that clear.

It will be quite an issue, and there is growing concern at the number of human and civil rights issues cropping up. I have no information regarding whether they are in any way associated with the authorities and I do not believe that such an association exists. However, their level and extent have led to continuing concern.

As I said in the House some weeks ago, every member state must now decide its position on Romania and Bulgaria. We committed to consulting the social partners and are in the process of doing that. We took a lead position during our EU Presidency in 2004 on the basis that others would follow in the short term, but that has not happened. If anything, there has been little movement other than in a few countries. Some countries, including Ireland, Britain, Sweden, Finland, Spain, Portugal and Greece, have opened their labour markets, but I advocated that all the member states should open their labour markets to the ten new countries.

We have not made a formal decision. However, at the current time it would create too many difficulties for us if we opened up to Romania and Bulgaria. Others must open first. We already have a permit system whereby people in strategic industries can work here. There are difficulties anyway. While we can control the labour market in terms of coming here to work, from 1 January 2007 we will not be able to control the number of people moving here. That will bring its own management problems. My view is that at this stage that is probably as much as we can manage.

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