Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Yesterday, 44 people were killed in horrible circumstances in Baghdad, and subsequently two American soldiers were killed, equally horribly, and the world is outraged. Yesterday too, 14 people were killed by the Israeli defence forces in Gaza. It would be a very useful exercise for this House to talk about how the world views the Middle East because quite clearly a Palestinian life is now worth far less in the world's view than an Israeli life and the killing of a Palestinian is far less significant than the killing of an Iraqi in Baghdad. There have been high level contacts between our Government and the Palestinian Authority and we have tried, quite properly, to be balanced about this but the stage is arriving now when we must say in the name of morality that what is being done to the Palestinian people is an offence against humanity, and is appallingly wrong. There is no proportion between the grievances of Israel and the response being meted out to the Palestinian people. The plans being hinted at for an apartheid regime in which many Israeli Arabs will be moved into a new State in order to preserve the racial purity of the Israeli State is a dangerous action for any country, particularly Israel. We need to discuss all these matters at some length because our Government is being criticised and is under pressure and we should support it. Furthermore, issues of fundamental morality are being waived.

I would also like us to debate the way in which the Revenue Commissioners do their business. They appear to ignore the law of the land and do not prosecute people. We write legislation in these Houses which entails serious penalties for people guilty of large-scale tax evasion and the Revenue Commissioners decide, on a matter of practice, that this is not important and do not prosecute people. We should have a debate on this.