Mary Henry (Independent)

I welcome the Minister and the Bill to the House. Any reservations I had about the Bill were greatly assuaged by the Minister's speech in which he stated that he would be most unhappy if legitimate protests were to be considered terrorist acts when that is not the case. It is most important that our reactions to terrorist threats do not impinge on our civil rights. America's homeland security legislation has impinged very seriously on the rights of a large number of American citizens and we do not want anything like that to happen here.

I wish to address Part 3 of the Bill, which I warmly welcome. Ireland is frequently extremely slow to ratify UN conventions, although we are quick to sign up to them. For example, since I was elected to this House, I have raised the issue of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972. I have been informed that enacting legislation for such conventions takes some time. However, more than 30 years is a very long time indeed. The most important of these conventions which requires ratification having been agreed to nearly 30 years ago, is the hostage convention.

We seem to have a peculiar attitude about hostages taken by people abroad in the sense that they seem to be of more importance and the crime more serious and heinous than when hostages are taken in this country. However, we have had a dreadful problem with the taking of hostages by paramilitaries on both sides — but the IRA in particular — for more than 30 years in Northern Ireland and in the Republic. It is a shocking situation. I wish I had heard the same outpouring of grief about Jean McConville who was killed after being taken hostage, as I did about Margaret Hassan. Both deaths were shocking but there was little public outpouring of grief about Jean McConville. I do not remember any church services being held in her memory. In this regard, we have a biased view depending on whether people are taken hostage in this country or abroad. Both situations are outrageous.

In Ireland we had appalling situations in which some people were made into human bombs while their families were held hostage. It was surely one of the lowest points we reached in our history. It was truly quite dreadful. I ask that we examine the situation raised by Senator Cummins regarding the Northern Bank robbery and the hostage taking in that case. There is a sense that this was a victimless crime since no one was killed. It is stated that £26 million was taken from the bank but that most of the bank notes cannot be used and it is therefore a victimless crime. However, that is not the case.

Members must have seen on television the interview of the young man from Poleglass who was one of the bank officials kidnapped. He is a very courageous man for the manner in which he spoke out about how it affected him to know that the perpetrators must have been people who lived near him and were in a position to watch him and his family. They told him they knew about him, his brother, father and mother, brother's girlfriend and threatened that unless he did as he was told, they would be killed. It must have been an appalling experience, from which I am quite sure none of them will recover.

There are two more people in the case who have not spoken out yet. I do not blame them since they are probably still in a state of extended shock. I am referring to the other bank official and his wife who was abandoned in a forest. If the woman had fallen down a cliff, would it have been her fault because she did not know the way out of the forest? This was a truly shocking terrorist crime and it can only be described as such. This incident will affect the woman for the rest of her life.

Hostage taking was popular at one stage in the Republic of Ireland. Some people were taken and ransoms paid but there was little publicity about these crimes. Some years ago I was involved in fund-raising and I asked one of my fellow fund-raisers if she thought a particular man and his wife would buy tickets. I realised I did not know the man's wife at all and asked my colleague if he did indeed have a wife. My colleague informed me that the man had a wife but that she was virtually a recluse as she was kidnapped 30 years previously by the IRA and has hardly come out since. The woman was approximately 50 years old at the time and although she had a husband and children and all that could be desired in terms of a good home, an income and so on, she is a recluse. These are not victimless crimes and that woman will be a victim of that kidnapping for the rest of her life. How many other people are in this position? Not all the kidnappings had been made as public as one might think. For example, I did not know about that particular case.

I was on the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation and was present on the afternoon of the Canary Wharf bombing. There were few people there and I do not know if the Minister was present but the two Sinn Féin representatives, Pat Doherty and Rita O'Hare, were present. They were very courageous and were very good contributors to the forum. When the bomb exploded, killing two people — one a newspaper vendor whom I am sure had nothing against the Minister, me or anyone else in Ireland — the forum had to be suspended by Ms Justice Catherine McGuinness because the IRA ceasefire had broken. We were all pretty miserable winding up and leaving the forum. Pat Doherty and Rita O'Hare were as disappointed and concerned as the rest of us. However, members of Sinn Féin will have to do more than that. They will have to say that those in the IRA who commit these dreadful crimes are criminals and that these are terrorist activities. The Taoiseach believes the IRA was involved in that robbery. Considering the time and energy he has put into the peace process and knowing what those words would mean, I cannot but believe he has good evidence to the contrary. We must realise that hostages in Ireland are in as bad a situation as hostages anywhere else. We must realise that those who take hostages in this country are just as criminal and terroristic as those we easily call terrorists when applying it to Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else. I commend this section. However, it is a great pity that it takes us so long to ratify many of the conventions we admit are most worthy and sign up to at once.