Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am sorry to sound like a cracked record, but yesterday 12 Palestinians and 15 Israelis were killed. The eyes of the world seem to have moved away from a cycle of horrific violence. As I keep saying, one of the two countries involved in that cycle is accepted as a part of the family of democratic nations. If we believe that the issue of the future is to be the triumph of democratic values over various forms of extremism, it is the duty of the democratic world to rein in the abuse of power by a democracy and to contribute to the end of suicide bombings. I call for a debate on this matter because the scale of the incessant killing is becoming grotesque. It is quite clear that the perpetration of the next killing will solve nothing. The killings are causing endless misery for thousands of families.

I have been approached about the Government's decision to terminate the back to education allowance. Will the Leader allow us to have a debate on second-chance education, in respect of which the allowance was particularly helpful?

I agree that we could do with a debate on Northern Ireland. Like Senator Brian Hayes, I fully support the Government's view on sanctions. I am sick of a party which gets any credit it can from the activities of paramilitarism and, in the next breath, pretends it has no connection with paramilitarism. It cannot have it both ways and it is time that this was sorted out once and for all. I want to see Sinn Féin become a serious political party and an end to ambiguities about where it stands on the issue of violence. It is extraordinary that it is pacifist in the South and militarist in the North and I cannot find anything more partitionist than that.