Labhrás Ó Murchú (Fianna Fail)

Senator Mansergh made a significant and thoughtful contribution to the issue of respecting people's conscientious position on State issues and also to ensure that agencies with a particular ethos would not be coerced into providing a service which runs counter to that ethos. I thought it reasonable that he would take the position in Britain as an example because there is a parallel there. I cannot see how anybody would suggest this was interfering in the internal affairs of another country. Does that mean that if we raise an issue on Iraq or Tibet or any other country, we are interfering in the internal affairs of that country as well? We all know why he raised that issue, namely, because a parallel position is developing in Ireland. It would be quite serious for us if we decided on coercing the Crisis Pregnancy Agency, which is rooted in a particular ethos, to provide a service but, worse still, to threaten it with the withdrawal of funding if it does not provide that service. It is time to debate this issue, not what happened in Britain.