Brendan Ryan (Labour)

If people are concerned – as are many Members of the House – about the humanitarian disaster looming in Iraq, they are obliged to demand immediately an end to the activity that is causing that disaster, namely, hostilities. I do not understand why a Government that claims it is neutral cannot say that this conflict should stop now. The British Government says that if we stop now, we will leave Saddam Hussein in power. Is that worse than letting the Iraqi people continue to suffer? Who are we to say that it is more important to eliminate the regime in Iraq than to end the agony of that country's people? If we are genuinely serious about humanitarian issues, we have an obligation to say that the best thing that can be done to alleviate the humanitarian disaster is to stop now.

The fact that people launched into an activity that is clearly both immoral and illegal does not permit us to avoid confronting the realisation that what was immoral and illegal when it began remains so and that the only thing changing is the scale of the horror. It is up to us and the Government to speak out.

I do not want to make a political issue out of this, but the view of this conflict has been fudged at Government level. The leader of Fine Gael believes the war is illegal and immoral and the Labour Party and its leader also believe that. The leader of Fianna Fáil in this House believes it, but we cannot get the Government to say that it believes the war is wrong. The reason for this is that we could not merely discuss the outcome of a war if we believe that the activity is illegal and immoral.