Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It is not extraordinary. There is a resonance between people such as myself and the citizens of the United States who feel exactly the same way I do about a discredited president who told them lies to start a war, who was elected illegally and who has led the country up a most dangerous and destructive cul-de-sac. That is what America represents and what I support. I am not anti-American; I am very proud of the American people as they have shown a willingness to face down their government in a way that foreign governments such as ours have failed to do.

Proinsias de Rossa, as the only Labour Party member of the European Parliament of 600-odd people, has extraordinary leverage. On thinking about it I remembered that he is a member of the Party of European Socialists, a very formidable, coherent and long-established group. I also remembered that the Government's major party is hanging around with the discredited leftovers of European fascism in an extraordinary ad hoc arrangement of parties because it cannot make up its mind whether it is a Socialist or Christian Democrat party. Therefore Fianna Fáil has no allies in the European Parliament and can find nobody to support it when it produces the sort of amendment to the report such as that put forward by Eoin Ryan. That is a fundamental fact.