Brian O'Shea (Waterford, Labour)

I still have concerns that we can have up to 850 troops serving abroad, yet the indications are that we will only have 70 towards the end of the year. Every effort should be made to make sure that our troops, who are up there with the best when it comes to peacekeeping, should be available for all these trouble spots and areas of human suffering that are unfortunately too prevalent around the world.

I raised with the Minister's predecessor an Amnesty International report on the prevalence of rape in the camps. When I visited Chad, we were not allowed enter the camps. We were on a hill overlooking them, which can be quite large and many of which came together in a random way. Every effort should be made in future missions run by the UN to ensure that there is a good deal of power for the military to become more involved on the ground so that such violence against the person is reduced to a minimum and eliminated where possible.

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