Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is true.

I am surprised at myself, as I regard myself as something of a Euro-critic, but this enthusiasm for an Irish person to be President of the European Commission irrespective of his political views astonishes me. I have no desire to have someone made President of the Commission who is an advocate of brutal competition for everybody else but who has managed to avoid the unpleasantness of competition for himself in every job to which he has been appointed. I would like the Taoiseach to be President of the Commission. I know what the Taoiseach stands for and I know he understands what competition does to ordinary people. To suggest that someone who has wreaked depredation on the developing world with his enthusiasm for free trade and the World Trade Organisation would be appropriate to preside over the one island of civilisation in an increasingly brutal world, namely the European Union, seems to be carrying national enthusiasm too far. I would not be particularly keen on that individual.

Driving here today I heard the radio news and yet again was embarrassed by the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform. A Pakistani doctor who has lived here for ten years described how his elderly parents were refused a visitors' visa to come here for the birth of their grandchild because the Department suspected they would sneak in, stay here and steal some national resource. I do not know the mind of the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform but it embarrasses us every time something like this occurs. I wish we could have a transparent, accessible visa policy, where people did not have to make telephone calls at the convenience of a couple of officials in a Department which seems to believe that the best way to deal with all foreigners is to ignore them for as long as possible.