Alan Shatter (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I draw the Deputy's attention to what I said earlier, which is that our UN resolution is to provide for a UN mission, which it is, to train the domestic Malian forces so that they are fit for purpose and able to carry out their duties and able to protect that population effectively. It is not the role of Ireland to make decisions or engage in matters that relate to the particular government in an individual country.

I find the Deputy's concept of neutrality interesting. I am not sure what is the moral platform on which one stands back and watches people being brutalised, arms being cut off, women being raped - as has happened in northern Mali - and women being discriminated against and treated as second-class citizens while fundamentalists impose Sharia law and try to turn the population back to the seventh or eighth century, although I believe in the seventh or eighth century there was a more humane form of Islam than that which Sharia law in its strictest fundamentalist terms seeks to impose on populations. I see this as a human rights issue and a neutral state participating - as I have said, it is not finalised that we will participate - in a UN sanctioned mission whose objective is to ensure that human life is protected and that individuals are not victims of atrocities. I do not have any respect for a concept of morality where one stands back and watches people being killed, people having their limbs chopped off, women being raped and then pats oneself on the back and claims to be morally superior having simply watched it.

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