Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill and the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform to the House. The Bill is entitled the Criminal Justice (Terrorist Offences) Bill 2002 and was debated in the Dáil in 2003. I am sure there are good reasons and explanations as to why it has taken so long to come to the Seanad. As they have not been stated, I am sure the Minister will outline them in his reply.

The essential point of this legislation is that it is an expression of international solidarity. Terrorism is a problem that affects us all and it is important there are no gaps in the different ways that member states deal with the problem. As seen with the Madrid bombings, in principle, any state is vulnerable to attack. Without intending to cause any offence, such attacks fall on the just and the unjust alike.

While the modern international problem has been with us for at least 30 years, arguably it goes back 200 years. The First World War was caused by the assassination of an heir to a throne. Over the holidays, I read a book about the attempted bombing in 1800 of the First Consul, Napoleon. The modern phenomenon arises from the fact that a conventional war cannot be won by those groups who resort to terrorism. Iraq is a clear illustration of this point. While Saddam's conventional forces were quickly defeated, the aftermath has gone on with some intensity. The Minister may have seen al-Zarqawi's recent declaration in which he denounced candidates in the forthcoming Iraqi elections as "demi-idols" and voters as "infidels". In The Independent of 24 January, he was quoted as saying "we have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology". There is no doubt that terrorism is resorted to by people who cannot get a democratic mandate or who only have the support of a small section of the population. This is clear in the Basque country. In Northern Ireland, as long as the IRA was engaged in a terror campaign, the republican movement never had a majority of the Nationalist vote.

I have no reason to believe that the Minister does not agree that terrorism cannot be defeated by security measures alone. Realising this does not mean that one should not engage in all the proper security measures. However, it must be recognised there are other dimensions and problems that require political, economic and social approaches, complementary to combatting terrorism. There also needs to be a recognition, through firmness of the Government's concerns, in general, that without a legitimate cause terrorism does not serve the causes it purports to serve. I define a legitimate cause as a struggle for self-determination with the support of the majority of the population. That is clear in the Northern Ireland situation where it would be hard to argue that a united Ireland is closer today as a result of 30 years of conflict than it was in the late 1960s. While other justifications can be put forward, it did not advance one iota the promotion of a united Ireland.

It is welcome that the Minister has shown no sign of going in the direction, which unfortunately some democratic governments have, of the total suspension of the rule of law and the legal no-man's land of Guantanamo Bay. I hope we will not go down that route. The Minister is not a member of the Government who would describe himself as a socialist.