Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I will make my contribution in a bullet point fashion because there are a number of issues to be dealt with. Let us first get rid of the anti-American notion. I had the privilege of meeting Senator John McCain last September to talk about Irish illegals in America. Senator McCain is a brave American. He was the one who led the charge against his own Administration to ensure that American agents everywhere in the world were bound by American law. He did not believe he was being anti-American by insisting that America stand up for its principles.

The debate about extraordinary rendition is about a lapse in standards on the part of the United States that it claims to support. None of us who criticised them were being anti-American. We support what America stands for and are asking that America stand for what it claims to stand for but it has singularly failed to do so. Let us get away from the anti-American aspect. I believe in the principles on which the American republic was founded.

Let us then look to our friends in America. I had the great privilege to be involved in the protests against the war in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago. Those protests were led by the Irish Voice in Vietnam, which was presided over by Dan Breen, who was a founding member of Fianna Fáil and an inspiring figure for people in Fianna Fáil. He had no worries about upsetting his friends in America and did not listen to people whinging about American investment in Shannon when there was a principle of the oppression of a small country to be defended. That was the Fianna Fáil that used to be; the current Fianna Fáil is an entirely different animal.