Brendan Ryan (Labour)

The best way to deal with people who claim to be non-residents is to require them to prove they are non-resident, rather than the reverse whereby the Revenue Commissioners must prove they are resident. We should adopt the approach of the United States. Any tax paid by Irish citizens abroad, if they are non-resident, should be offset against their Irish tax but if this still leaves them owing tax in Ireland, they should pay. That is what the United States requires its non-resident citizens to do.

A company I will not mention by name announced this morning in Cork that 120 employees, some in Mitchelstown and others in Mallow, are to be moved to an office in Cork Airport because there are no suitable premises anywhere nearer. I thought we had partnership in this country, which would mean that such destructive decisions, which mess up people's lives and families, were not taken arbitrarily and announced out of thin air, but were negotiated and agreed on. I thought this was what partnership meant. I appeal to the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to intervene on behalf of families whose lives have been turned upside down by a company which seems to be determined to emulate Ryanair in the quality of its industrial relations.

As we speak, the brutal assault on Falluja continues. It is worth pointing out that all journalistic news reports from Falluja are currently subject to military censorship. This is not something I picked up from any of the Irish media but from the BBC in one of its reports. We have regularly asked for a debate in this House on the Middle East, and I know the Leader supports that. Before we have that debate I would like to see a statement from the Government as to whether it believes Kofi Annan is right when he says the assault on Falluja is illegal and foolish or whether it supports the US-led coalition in this brutal assault. The coalition will of course capture Falluja but will lose the minds of millions of Iraqi people in the process. Again I ask that we discuss in this House the implications of this extraordinarily foolish adventure in the Middle East.