Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I move:

That Seanad Éireann

noting that the members of Seanad Éireann have always condemned the CIA practice of prisoner rendition;

remembering that in spite of this, Seanad Éireann declined to set up an inquiry into Irish collusion in such rendition;

welcomes the report of the European Parliament committee set up to inquire into European complicity in such rendition;

alarmed by the unequivocal criticism of Irish Government practice contained in the report;

agrees with the findings of the committee that acceptance of diplomatic assurances is an inadequate way to defend human rights;

regrets the reported failure of the Irish Government satisfactorily to answer all questions put to it by the committee and calls on the Government to comply with the committee's request to set up an Oireachtas investigation into the manner in which the State has dealt with the issue of rendition at domestic, European and international level; and

pending the outcome of such an investigation calls for an immediate ban on the use of Irish airports and airspace by all CIA aircraft.

This is a well-attended debate, as they say in the local newspapers. I am sorry I must move this motion because there was a developing strong consensus in this country about foreign affairs up to four or five years ago. The period after the collapse of the Soviet Union left a world in which there seemed to be a real possibility that a superior set of ethical and moral values would emerge, not in any sanctimonious way or one that smacked of moral superiority.

Even if we acted as any sensible country would and said that in all choices, the interests of Ireland must come first, we would then hopefully have begun a debate on what the interests of Ireland were. I believe Éamon de Valera first expounded on the matter approximately 70 years ago when he stated the interests of a small country were in stability, international order and an international rule of law. I understood this was our position.

As with everything, including our personal lives, really difficult challenges to our value system determine whether or not we believe in things. Sometimes, the fact that we believe in something does not mean we live up to our standards and we can deviate from them and sometimes use ambiguous language. The experience of the world after the Second World War was that wars achieved very little and mostly did no more than delay an outcome that would otherwise have happened and in the process of delaying it, wreaked considerable human damage.

The second thing I thought we were going to work at was a very strong commitment to end the idea of an international arms trade once and for all. The third thing was that while there might have been a surviving military superpower or, as the French call it, a hyperpower, the ingrained values of democracy in the United States, which the people of that country take for granted, would prevail. They believe they live in the freest country in the world which has always defended freedom, democracy and human rights everywhere in the world. It comes as a shock to many decent Americans to discover the actual record. It is not as bad as others but is far from perfect. This was the context in which we operated and most of us in this country believed in it although we might have disagreed about details.

Something has happened over recent years, which is why this issue comes up again. We experienced the horror of the events of 11 September 2001, which were horrible, but there have been other horrors. It is not to diminish the extraordinary trauma of the American people after those events to say that other people in other states at other times have suffered awful trauma. Aeroplanes have been blown out of the sky by other terrorists. There had been bombings of public transport in Italy and, I believe, in France before the events of 11 September 2001. The response to the events of 11 September 2001 ought to have been and should continue to be part of a recognition of the need for states to deal with the use of violence as a political weapon via the targeting, directly or irresponsibly, of civilians, which is what terrorism is, in my opinion.

The fundamental value we were defending was the value of freedom. There is no freedom without the rule of law. Freedom is a wonderful concept that people like me advocated in a vague form with a slightly fuzzy head in the 1960s, but it is really only possible under the rule of law. The real tragedy, which is the nub of this notion, concerns how the country that most vigorously claims to be the defender of freedom and the rule of law scandalously abandons this commitment to facilitate the extraction of information by coercion — I believe this word is now used in its draft regulations — but what the rest of us know to be torture, finds willing allies outside the US and possibly within the EU to facilitate this and, in some cases, finds allies outside the EU to organise and carry out the job of torture for it. This is where the entire issue of rendition arose.

To the citizens of Europe, as they have expressed their views through Parliament and the European Parliament, rendition is among the most grossly offensive activities that a country which claims to be governed by civilised principles could practise. It ranks with Abu Ghraib and the extraordinary tolerance of the vulgar abuse of the former Iraqi dictator as he was about to be executed. It is among those things that people see as offensive to the values we stand for and incompatible with them to the extent that no matter how grave the emergency might be perceived to be, it can never be justified.

This is where this issue arose. I give Senator Norris credit for being the first person to raise this issue. He raised it in terms of identified flights and aeroplanes and the times of their passing through Shannon Airport in particular. At the beginning, people in this House simply asked repeatedly for the information that was available to be made known. For at least a year, if not longer, obfuscation from the Department of Transport was the perpetual response. It was only when other investigating agencies outside this State began to assemble irrefutable information that there was a dawning of interest, which was not simply found on this side of the House. Sincere Members on the Government side, whose sincerity I accept, began to see that there was an issue of profound moral importance.

We got to the stage where we agreed on the creation of an all-party committee to investigate the information that was available. I said at that first informal meeting that I wanted an all-party committee on which there was a Government majority because I wanted a report which reflected a consensus of views and because I believed there was a widely held consensus about the unacceptability of these things. Then the all-party committee disappeared. We discovered the European Parliament, to its credit, had set up a special committee to investigate this issue and its report was published recently. This report was and ought to be an embarrassment to many of the governments of Europe. In defence of our own position, whether by design or by accident, we are not as culpable as others. Nobody was kidnapped on our territory.

Nobody is saying we have a scrap of evidence that any person on the way to or from one of these torture chambers was in an aeroplane that landed in Ireland. Nobody ever suggested that. It would be a great pity if the Minister of State were to devote a significant portion of his speech to the fact there is no evidence, because nobody suggested there was. What we suggested is that aeroplanes that are manifestly linked with these activities were given the full facilities of Shannon Airport. When we knew these aeroplanes were being used for such appalling practices, why did we not attempt to find out if there was forensic evidence proving people had been detained forcibly on those aeroplanes? We claim to believe in the supremacy of the rule of law.

The committee of the European Parliament that investigated the issue released a draft report. The response — mostly from the Government side — was that it was only a draft report and we should await the final report. When the final report was produced it was a poor reflection on many of the countries of Europe and it contained conclusions which are and ought to be an embarrassment to anybody living here. That is unfortunate for a country that used to stand for the highest of principles. The judgment of the committee is that the Government did not co-operate fully with it.

The report stated there was a significant number of flights. Since then the Government has been having fun identifying a couple of flights it claimed could not have been what they were alleged to be. The reason the committee may not have been right about these details is that it was not given enough information in time, in the same way we were refused that information. The information was clouded in confusion.

In another example of confused information, two different versions were given of whether the Garda has the right to search an aeroplane. One version was stated publicly and another privately. Which is true? The Government stated it asked the US authorities if prisoners were transferred through Shannon Airport and they said "No". All they ever said is that nobody went through Shannon Airport. We then discovered a prisoner in shackles who was a member of the US forces passed through Shannon Airport. We were told that was a mistake.

The Government still chooses to believe the unsubstantiated, non-evidence based assurances of senior members of the US Administration. The committee of the European Parliament concluded the Government should not rely on diplomatic assurances as these matters were far too serious. It also suggested we should now do what the Human Rights Commission suggested and set up an Oireachtas committee to investigate this matter. If Seanad Éireann had done what we had asked it to do, and what the House originally needed to do, we would not be subject to that criticism now.

The motion simply repeats what has been said in the committee. The amendment is so extraordinary Senator Norris almost got a fit of apoplexy about it on the Order of Business today. Perhaps he was right because it seems to say all manner of extraordinary things. It commends the Government for its full co-operation with the work of the committee, even though the Government has been criticised by the committee for not giving its full co-operation. We now have a situation straight out of "1984" or perhaps "Alice in Wonderland" where the truth is what we say it is. The committee stated the Government did not co-operate but the Government is clapping itself on the back for its co-operation. It is a great pity this motion has to come before the House. It is an even greater pity the good name of a country that has a courageous record of standing up for human rights has been tarnished by the silly ineptitude of a Government trying to curry favour with what is now perhaps the most discredited regime that has presided over the United States in 50 years.