Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I do not wish to go over much of this again, but given that at least on one occasion the former Taoiseach offered little hope of success in relation to the lobby regarding immigration reform in the United States, will the Taoiseach give us a sense of what his expectations are in relation to the current lobby in which he and the Irish Government are directly engaged? What hope of success does he hold out to give some expectation to people not only in the United States but also their families and communities at home? Will he spell out in some way what he envisages as being the end result, the net product, of the collective effort of all concerned? Does the current presidential election year in the United States offer opportunities that might not have been openly on offer in previous years?

Yesterday, I raised with the Taoiseach the issue of extraordinary rendition flights and he offered a customary stonewall response to me in relation to US military aircraft at Shannon. Given the apparent unwillingness of the Government to alter the current arrangement of the use of Shannon, has a Taoiseach ever put to a US President or someone at any other level in the US Administration, the prospect of the actual use of Garda searches as a means of establishing the factual position on the use of Shannon by US military aircraft to transfer prisoners from one destination to another and, in the context of my question yesterday against the backdrop of the current international conference here addressing certain munitions, that these flights would not also be used to transport munitions on whose use and manufacture this country is involved in seeking a ban?

Will the Taoiseach take a more definite position on this matter, particularly in light of the report published yesterday by Amnesty International which indicted the Government on its failure to act heretofore and its reliance entirely on the oral assurance of the Bush regime in the United States, which is not sufficient guarantee or an assurance for a significant swathe of Irish opinion which I believe is well within a majority.

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