Brendan Ryan (Labour)

In the number of years I have spent in this House I have frequently ended up in the company of people regarded by some members of the Garda as subversives. In such cases I noticed that whether three people were attending a meeting or 20, there was never a shortage of gardaí to keep an eye on these suspected subversives. They would incessantly follow these people around, visit their homes and pick them up.

I would regard the threat of people such as those who carried out this morning's killings to the way we live in this country as worse than the Provisional IRA, as their actions are based entirely on self-centred and brutal greed, without any spark of ideal. That is not to explain or dilute anything done by subversives in this country.

The threat is profound and an innocent young man who happened to be working in the house is dead. We should not hear about more legislation and my views on prisons are well known. If we were to double the number of prison places, the prisons would inevitably be full or overcrowded in another two months. We need resources for those sections of the Garda Síochana that are most expert in this area, in order for them to have 24-hour vigilance over these people in the way they used to with what were probably correctly termed subversives 20 years ago. There should be a continuous assembly of information.

How could this murdered individual, a top Garda suspect, have been in this location without anybody knowing? For 20 years Gerry Adams could not be anywhere in this State without the Garda knowing exactly where he was, which was right. How can an equivalent threat to our society apparently not be under the same level of surveillance? That is a matter for the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform inallocating resources and the priorities for theGarda.

I call for an immediate debate on the proposals by Minister for Health and Children regarding residential care for older people. There are a series of issues contained in these which are profoundly worrying for older people and the type of society we have. Age Action Ireland has already indicated that the only group which will have these burdens imposed on them is the elderly. I find the matter distasteful.

We are approaching Christmas week and people are getting involved in singing hymns about peace and harmony, most with images of Bethlehem and Palestine. What the Western world and the world in general is doing to the people of Palestine is only one step away from genocide. These people will begin to die soon, either because of internal strife, hunger, disease or the absence of electricity. This is done because in the most freely contested democratic election the Middle East ever saw, the wrong party won. That party is asked to do things Sinn Féin or the IRA were not asked to do before we negotiated with them. We did not ask the IRA to recognise Northern Ireland, renounce violence forever or recognise a succession of previous agreements before we negotiated with it.

The only liberation struggle ever asked to abandon its principles before negotiation is that which now represents the people of Palestine. The world's reaction was to impose the most appalling suffering, not on the government but on the ordinary people of the Palestinian territories, the place where all of our minds will look during the next few weeks because it is the place where the events of Christmas took place. I would like our consciences to be a little aware of what is being done in our name to the people of Palestine.