Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We could solve a problem, if it exists, by a process of consensus and agreement, which would eliminate the risk so eloquently described by Senator Minihan last night of a debate degenerating into something most unpleasant and untoward. We could still refer the question of a proper definition of citizenship to the same committee that was able to deal expeditiously and efficiently with the question of property and I wish we would do so.

Last week in Iraq four Americans were brutally murdered under conditions that nobody could justify. Yesterday a rocket was fired at a mosque. It is time that countries like ours demanded a fundamental change in the way in which Iraq is being governed and the way in which so-called security is being protected in Iraq, and raised questions about the definition of freedom, which bans newspapers. It is almost impossible to ban a newspaper in the United States no matter what it incites. Armed militia can make the most extraordinary claims and because the United States is in many ways a free society, such things cannot be banned. Apparently in Iraq, the same apostles of freedom banned a newspaper and, as a result, created the circumstances under which many young Americans and many more Iraqis have been killed.

It is worth recording that objective analysts have concluded that at least 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the past year. Mr. Hans Blix now believes that the situation for ordinary Iraqis is worse than it was under the brutal regime ofSaddam Hussein. It is time for Ireland, which currently holds the Presidency of the EU, to initiate a serious debate based on more than US interests and sloganeering.

I compliment the widows of Ireland on the effectiveness of the lobby they conducted, which transformed Fianna Fáil back to somewhere it used to be, on the side of the excluded and marginalised. Perhaps it is an augury of a future in which Fianna Fáil rediscovers its roots.