Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The dispersal policy is a special discriminatory one applied by successive Spanish and French Governments for nearly three decades to Basque political prisoners. The dispersal policy was designed with the aim to uproot the prisoners from their social, emotional and family environments, in addition to denying their right to take part in the political life of their country. There are 354 Basque political prisoners imprisoned in 76 prisons in the Spanish and French states. An example of the distances of travel required by visiting families includes 51 prisoners incarcerated more than 1,000 km from their families and 105 prisoners incarcerated between 800 km and 990 km from their families. The Minister has said he cannot comment on this practice but the same argument could have been made about political prisoners in Belfast in the 1970s and 1980s, that another state could not make a comment because it was an internal matter for the UK. There are human rights abuses going on in this situation and we need a real statement.

See this speech in context