Brendan Ryan (Labour)

My sympathies are with Senator O'Toole. I can never understand why matters cannot be reported or discussed in the Oireachtas which can be discussed elsewhere. It is for us to organise our business but I believe the Senator has a genuine point.

Yesterday's report by the Central Bank of Ireland on lending had many items in it which would concern one. However, the most disturbing item I heard was the projection that within another five years, only 20% of households will be able to afford to buy their own houses. If one wants a recipe for incredible social tension, that is it. The idea that people will not be able to have a secure home in which to live and have a family will create the type of tensions which I thought we would be able to avoid in a successful economy. While I know we discuss it regularly, I would like us to discuss yet again the issue of housing, affordability of housing, the failure of the Government's policy in the area of social and affordable housing and the failure of a number of projects to deliver the amount of housing needed.

Another issue I wish to raise, which perhaps we could discuss in the context of corporate power, is the extraordinary attempt by a private hospital funded by the State, but nevertheless officially private, to intimidate a former patient into silence in respect of her criticisms. It is very easy for a corporate body where individuals will not be personally liable for costs to take a defamation case against an individual who will be. We should change the law to ensure that if corporate bodies decide they want to take defamation cases, the individuals who run that corporate body should be held personally liable for the consequences of that action. That would soften the coughs of many people who seem to be quite happy to take an individual, who has suffered from cancer, to court to try to intimidate her. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the situation, it is a disproportionate and over-the-top response which should be condemned as out of keeping with any proper behaviour.

I again raise an issue I have raised every month. There has been yet another massacre of civilians in Gaza. They are becoming too frequent. Super-duper, high-powered technology missed its target and 18 people, including children, were killed. The world blinks, makes the ritual condemnation and then sells more arms to the country which perpetuates these atrocities. It is time the world said "Stop" and recognised that the sense of moral ambiguity which states that we will not speak to Hamas but will arm the other side is a profound moral affront. Anybody who saw the Channel 4 programme during the week on jihad will know that most young Muslims do not support suicide bombers or any such brutalities but they all support armed resistance to what they see as the extraordinarily one-sided view in the western world about the struggles of the Palestinian people.

As another relic of the struggles of the 1980s, I welcome the re-election of Daniel Ortega as president of Nicaragua. The destruction of democracy by international terrorism in Nicaragua in 1989 was among the worst things the world has ever done. It was international terrorism funded by the United States. It is delightful to see Daniel Ortega finally vindicated and back where he should have remained had it not been for the imposition of a civil war by a malevolent United States.