Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I am reluctant to say much on the Northern Ireland elections because everybody has said everything that can be said. My views on Ian Paisley are colourful and I will not express them in the House. However, I am not aware of any member of his party who has been convicted of shooting, bombing or killing anyone. We must not make partial statements about who is culpable for what. Nothing in Northern Ireland was ever that bad that it justified the killing of a single human being. If we are going to talk about who is fit, we will be going into dangerous territory. I do not have a brief for the DUP for reasons to do with the exploitation of sectarianism. However, we must not go into the territory of who said what because many people with a major role to play in Northern Ireland are in grave danger of being accused of worse offences than sectarianism.

It is time we had a debate on education and I ask the Leader to arrange one. Last Sunday, Rupert Murdoch's flagship organ in this country published what it claimed to be a survey of the best secondary schools in Ireland. It was nothing but a travesty of the achievement of schools. The newspaper informed us that going private can pay as Ireland's best schools are mostly fee-paying. I am happy that the schools my children attended, even according to the incorrect figures in The Sunday Times, are in the top 20 of the list, yet neither of them were fee-paying. I have no idea from where The Sunday Times drew the conclusion that the best schools are fee-paying.