Brendan Ryan (Labour)

In regard to what Senator Brian Hayes wants debated, it is worth recording that this country has the second highest level of income inequality in the OECD and is only surpassed by the United States. In the United States a debate is beginning in newspapers as diverse in their ideologies as The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal about the implications of inequality. Hurricane Katrina brought it to people's attention. I would like the Leader to arrange a debate on inequality in Ireland, although there is no urgency because we will not solve it overnight. There is a huge issue of people being stuck, of social mobility and of class mobility declining in the United States and we do not want that to happen here, although I do not want to suggest for one second that the Government is endeavouring to turn us into such a rigid, class-based society.

On the matter raised by Senator Henry, this morning's edition of The Guardian suggests that prisoners are being interrogated for the United States in countries which are members of the European Union or are, at least in a couple of cases, aspiring to be members. If the EU does not guarantee that the standard of human rights it claims to uphold is being upheld in the teeth of pressure from the United States, then the whole concept of the EU as a space of freedom, democracy and human rights is gone. If even 30 prisoners in eastern Europe are regarded as not being covered by the rules by which the EU claims to be covered, then we are in serious trouble.

Will the Leader arrange an urgent debate on telecommunications? We now have the extraordinary situation where our privatised — disastrously, in my view — major telecommunications provider is apparently to be taken over by a Swiss state company. We have the situation where the Corrib gas field is, to a significant extent, owned by the Norwegian Government. I do not have any ideological baggage about privatisation but what is quite clear in this case is that it has been a monumental disaster. The reason broadband uptake is so bad is that Eircom cannot make money out of it and is endeavouring to hold on to its monopoly. We are coming to the stage where the question of returning the telecommunications network to public ownership is long overdue. If we do not return it to public ownership, we will end up building a parallel, publicly owned telecommunications network because Eircom clearly will not do the job.