David Norris (Independent)

If the Senator is intelligent enough to listen, instead of smirking and giggling, I will explain. The reason I call into question Condoleeza Rice's intellectual or emotional gender identity was her description of the bloodbath unleashed by the Americans and Israelis in Lebanon as the birth pangs of democracy. I reserve the right to question the fundamental humanity and decency of a person who would use such a phrase to describe the catastrophe unleashed in Lebanon. If Senators believe Condoleeza Rice they are very foolish.

How are we anti-American when we are on the same side as the American people and Congress? The fools on the other side have aligned themselves with a discredited element in one of the worst governments the United States has ever had and its worst ever presidency. The introduction of the TDIP committee's report states that the prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm of international law — jus cogens — from which no derogation is possible. Again and again, the current United States Administration has defended torture and techniques such as water-boarding perfected by the Gestapo.

The Government's position is that there is no evidence that rendition took place through Ireland. I would like the Minister and Senators on the other side to admit that it has been proved incontrovertibly that aeroplanes, which were known and numbered and whose records I have placed on the record of the House, passed through Irish airspace. These aircraft, for example, an aeroplane with the registration number N379P, were associated with rendition and nothing else. When we named and shamed it the registration was changed. These aeroplanes were refuelled in Shannon Airport as they returned directly from rendition. Is this not assistance? Are Senators on the other side speaking English? Are they capable of moral feeling? It disgusts me that the motion should be amended in such an insupportable and disgraceful manner.

The TDIP committee's findings as regards Ireland are very clear and attempts to turn the debate on them into some petty, parochial, cabbage patch row are disingenuous in the extreme. Do the Senators opposite seriously believe that Proinsias De Rossa is running the European Parliament? A majority was achieved in a democratic assembly and all the Government side can find is some obscure republican plot, which ill comes from the Senators opposite. The committee called on the Irish Government to institute a parliamentary inquiry. Such an inquiry was established but destroyed for the most petty and parochial of reasons.

We know torture is taking place and that the Americans approve of it. We also know the United States Supreme Court is blenching at this moral obliquity. We know of the appalling conditions in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prison camps. We now know, thanks to the investigative reporters of the BBC, the locations of the black sites — the denied torture camps — in Poland. I have a document detailing names, dates and places, which I will send to the Minister. It transpires that our own friendly, executive jet, N379P, turns up again at this named but unpronounceable airport in Poland. What does the Minister of State have to say about that? We know about torture. A report in The Irish Times today indicates that torture is endemic in Jordan. King Abdullah is a decent and honourable man. He has tried to get some of these prisons closed down but the situation is endemic. The Americans used us as an assistant in the outsourcing of torture, which is to our eternal shame. Part of the argument was that jobs at Shannon Airport were more important than standards. What a lamentable and stupid idea. I voted against the beef deals in Iraq and I was told from the Government side of the House that while I was saying the moral thing, we could not afford it. We did not do it but we got stung because we were still owed €100 million. We did the lousy thing and got stung, and we are doing it again now. We are also doing it with China because the smell of money is so rich in the nostrils in the people who are running this country. It is a profound disgrace. There are decent people on the Government side of the House who share the same ideas, but they are whipped into line and that is why this report is right. The Government is running this House, telling people of conscience what to do and how to vote. It is a pity they do not have the guts to remember their own alleged republicanism.