Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

FARC is a Marxist communist group which used Provisional IRA methods and technology to herd a group of people into a church in Colombia and mortared the church destroying them. The provisional movement is the only political movement on this island — although it had some difficulty in admitting it — to keep a full-time representative in Havana, the capital of one of the last communist states in the world. The provisional movement is the only party in this country which strongly identifies with ETA and devotes pages of An Phoblacht to what is happening in the organisation. The provisional movement is the only one in this country which, when its members were elected to the European Parliament, sat down with the communist parties in the parliament and chose to do so on an internal division — it was not thrust upon them.

I do not like to advertise a newspaper, but it is worthwhile for us to look at An Phoblacht and examine the agenda which is being pushed forward by it. In last week's edition, a whole page was devoted to an analysis of Grigor Gysi's PDS — the former party of Walter Ulbricht and the East German communists — who are their allies in the European Parliament. Two pages of the edition were devoted to Arthur Scargill and a lengthy ideological debate on Marxism was carried over the previous two weeks, if Senators are interested.