Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I thank you, a Cheann Comhairle, for allowing us to raise the private notice question and I am grateful for the Minister of State's replies so far.

We had an opportunity earlier today of raising some of the issues at the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs. The meeting was attended by senior officials of the Department of Foreign Affairs, who were forthright and complete in their answers. Nevertheless, I will make a few important points.

First, there is no point in imagining there is not a background to this dispute. It is that the burden of the fiscal adjustment has fallen overwhelmingly and disproportionately on the very large number of people in the lower grades of the public and Civil Service. I will not dwell on this but I say it as a former Minister who looked at a small army of civil servants who were very far below those on middle and high incomes. In fact, some of the lower civil servants in my Department would have qualified for family income supplement, such were their circumstances. That is a factor. That being said, the advancement of their working conditions should not be at the cost of quenching the right to travel and to hold a passport with such grievous discomfort as is taking place, in Molesworth Street in particular.

The Minister of State may be sympathetic to the following point. Given my introduction to my supplementary question, it would be appropriate to locate this issue in the general context of the talks between the Government and representatives of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. There is considerable merit in that. The issues at the background of this dispute are not particular to it. They are elsewhere as well. If progress is being made in the talks between Government, the ICTU and mediation forces it would be useful to attach this dispute as quickly as possible to that process, giving, as it does, the opportunity of transcending the particular difficulties.

Second, if a backlog of 44,000 is threatening to rise to 50,000 it would be useful to arrange a place for queuing to take place in less distressing conditions and to break the large number of cases into categories. This could be done through the tracking system, which would give people an idea how long they will be waiting.

I share the Minister of State's reservation about outsourcing. It has not been the success people claim. Outsourcing of passport provision depends on the capacity to produce a secure document, to meet security conditions and to achieve international acceptability.

Members of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs heard how Ryanair, for example, has rejected out of hand the suggestion that it would, like other low cost carriers operating out of Belfast and other airports, accept other documents as photographic proof of identity. I find this extraordinary. Some low cost operators flying out of Belfast are doing this but Ryanair has said flatly that it will not even consider it. If we are, correctly, to stress the constitutional right to travel as something which should not be defeated by the trade union right to representation neither should the constitutional right to travel be defeated by intransigence and by putting identification verification conditions in place which have no legal basis. These requirements have no legal basis in European law. In fact, they are in contravention of certain aspects of European law. Even as one is dealing with an emergency, every attempt should be made to remove as many people as possible from the 44,000 so that one has a smaller volume to deal with when a resolution is achieved. Measures, such as extending the validity of passports and seeking forms of renewal not located in Molesworth Street, have been proposed to achieve this reduction.

The rejection by the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the CPSU statement as being "too little too late" is unfortunate. Waiting for the moment when the union is forced to withdraw all of its actions before a resolution is possible will prolong the dispute. I would have preferred if yesterday's CPSU statement had been seen as a window of opportunity. I appeal that it be revisited and that the dispute be attached to the talks between Government, congress and mediation. This may offer us the shortest possible journey to a resolution.

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