Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Five or six years ago this House set up a body called the Irish Human Rights Commission, which is an independent body to oversee the way in which the State complies with its human rights obligations. Yesterday, that independent body issued a report which states the Irish State is not complying with its human rights obligations to prevent torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. That was in respect of a process that is politely known as extraordinary rendition, whereby the CIA kidnaps citizens of European countries off the streets of their own cities, bundles them into a car, takes them to an airport and flies them to a country in Africa or the Middle East where they are tortured. A number of reports, including that of the Human Rights Commission, state that Shannon Airport is one of the airports used for the transiting of these people who are being ferreted away for the purpose of torture.

This issue has been raised on a number of occasions and the Government's response is that it has received diplomatic assurances from the United States' Government that extraordinary rendition is not happening through Shannon, and it has accepted those assurances. The Human Rights Commission, however, states that is not sufficient to comply with our human rights obligations and that what is required is inspection of the aircraft. In this report, the Human Rights Commission states that since 2005 it has been asking the Government to inspect the aircraft which are going through Shannon to satisfy itself independently that people are not being moved through Shannon for the purposes of torture but the Government has not complied.

Why has the Government not complied with the request from the Human Rights Commission to inspect the aircraft going through Shannon and is it going to start a system of inspections of the aircraft in Shannon?

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