Mary White (Fianna Fail)

So much is going astray and there are so many inefficiencies. A colleague visited her husband in the intensive care cancer ward in St. Vincent's Hospital this morning and asked why we do not give the hospitals the money to run themselves as they are so brilliant?

I call for a debate on Northern Ireland and for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to kindly come before the House to discuss the status of the proposed public inquiry into the Stevens report. On 26 April, The Economist referred to this matter as Britain's "dirty war" and argued that a public inquiry is needed into army and police collusion in murders in Northern Ireland. In the Financial Times of 3 May, the chairman of the Bar Council of England and Wales called for a public inquiry into the murder of Pat Finucane and noted that the Stevens report found that members of the RUC and the army colluded with loyalist paramilitaries to murder Catholics. Two British publications are calling for public inquiry so I would like to know when one will be forthcoming.

I know the Minister made a statement when the report came out. I have read a great deal about Sir John Stevens who stated that when he showed his report to people, they said one would not read about such collusion in a book. What we really need to know is how far up the line this collusion went, who knew about it and who spoke out. We all know about the Member of Parliament, Mr. Hogg, who spoke out and that three weeks later Pat Finucane was killed. The bottom line in what Sir John Stevens said is that people knew.