David Norris (Independent)

Members want a real national broadcaster and ought to support RTE in its provision of its traditional kind of distinguished coverage of the arts and other interests.

I also wish to raise the issue of Guantanamo Bay, especially in the light of the suicides of three inmates. They were astonishingly described by an official — whose own title, namely, the person with responsibility for political diplomacy, poses some questions — as a public relations stunt. It was some stunt and I doubt whether the official herself would be inclined to engage in such a stunt. It showed astonishing disrespect to so describe it. Moreover, I was amazed at the governor of the prison, who stated that it was an act of aggression against the United States and that it constituted asymmetrical warfare. He was correct in that the action could not have been more asymmetrical. It involved one imprisoned, shackled and tightly controlled person in his pyjamas against a nuclear power which has no scruples in respect of torture. That is certainly asymmetrical. However, it begs a series of questions and I am glad that the Government has at last woken up to what is happening at Shannon Airport. That issue will probably be a matter for tomorrow night's Private Members' debate.

The Government has called in the American ambassador because a civilian aircraft with more than 100 military personnel and a prisoner in shackles has been discovered. I congratulate the whistleblower, the cleaning lady, who made the discovery. A cleaning lady, or even a garda disguised as a cleaning lady, who boarded some of the other aeroplanes might not have found someone in shackles, but would have found the shackles. I am glad the House will debate this issue tomorrow night.

In addition, the House should have a wider debate on the Middle East, in the light of the bombing of a beach in Gaza, in which there were seven civilian casualties, as well as the apparent descent of Palestine into civil war. It has been stirred up and is the direct responsibility of all those countries, including Ireland, which meanly held back money from the suffering people of Palestine, although they did nothing whatever about the human rights violations or the implementation of the human rights protocols attached to the external association agreement between Israel and the European Union.