Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Did the Government know then what we are being told now about them? Did the officials who came in to speak to the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs know they were dealing with people of that ilk? We were presented with three innocent Irishmen stuck in a bad place. If three drug dealers from this city ended up in Colombia doing deals with FARC would the Department of Foreign Affairs have provided a level of service which it told us at that committee was way above what it normally provides for Irish citizens in trouble abroad?

There is a question here. Did the Government know then what it is telling us now it knows about the Colombia three and, if so, why did it not tell the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs? Why did the Government keep that secret and pretend this was a situation where three Irish people were at risk? Did the Government know when it was briefing us and, if so, why did it withhold that information from the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs when, at its request, we were meeting in private?

I agree with my colleagues that anybody who is certified by a medical practitioner as being present in an accident and emergency department because of self-induced alcohol abuse should pay the cost of the ambulance, security and so on. Nobody should be funded for alcohol abuse. We need to deal with this issue. Much of our alcohol abuse is related to the fact that people have money on a scale they did not have previously. If they have money on that scale they might as well use some of it to pay for the costs of what they are imposing on society.