Mary Henry (Independent)

Congratulations were extended to everybody in the Department of Foreign Affairs on the important conference on HIV-AIDS which was organised as a major part of Ireland's EU Presidency. I support Senator McCarthy's call for a debate on the issue. The opinion at the conference, which I had the privilege of attending yesterday and this morning, was that it was five years too late to start debating this issue in eastern and central Europe. The Minister of State, Deputy Tom Kitt, who put a great deal of work into this conference, could lead a useful debate on the terrible catastrophe occurring in countries which will be members of the European Union in a few months.