Brendan Ryan (Labour)

We agreed it with the Leader and with the Whip of the Progressive Democrats in the House. I could not go around and shake everybody's hand on the issue. I know that some Fianna Fáil Senators opposed this motion before they knew what was in it. Some of them did not realise that the committee was to have a Government majority. They did not realise that we would put temperate language into the motion, yet they still opposed it. About what, therefore, did they take fright?

We are constantly being told that the US is a friendly country. Let us suppose that our neighbours in the UK were accused of doing something like this to an Irish citizen north of the Border. Does anyone believe that the sensitivities about hostile acts expressed by Senators on the other side of the House would interfere with their crusade to defend human rights north of the Border? They would be right to defend those human rights. The major party of the Government has decided that for an Oireachtas committee to ask questions, which the Government claims it has already asked, would constitute a hostile act. In effect, the Government is stating that human rights are not indivisible. It is stating that human rights matter when other people whom we do not like transgress them, but when our friends in the US are dodgy about the law and its fundamentals, then all we can do is blink, turn our backs and pretend it never happened.

At this late stage I know that there is still a significant majority in this House in favour of setting up this committee. The Opposition is in favour of it as are a significant number in the Government parties. Let them assert themselves just this once in the same way that those who are opposed to this motion asserted themselves. They should not be walked into the voting lobbies just because a local lobby based around Shannon Airport has put human rights behind their naive belief that there are jobs involved in looking up to Uncle Sam.