Brendan Ryan (Labour)

——and finds it necessary to resort to interruptions and abuse.

I remember very heated debates in this House about US foreign policy in Central America, in which I did not agree with the then Government. However, the Government adopted a position that was defensible, albeit different from mine, and did not deny there was a problem. When a US President visited this country, the Government, led by Garret Fitzgerald and including Peter Barry, the then Minister for Foreign Affairs, publicly made known what it felt was wrong with US policy on Central America.

The present Government, however, backed off, chickened out and is now compromised irreparably by the deaths of 650,000 people. According to information presented on the BBC website in recent days, the British Government's advisers now accept that The Lancet estimate of the number of deaths in Iraq was based on sound methodology, even though they will not say it is true. Some 650,000 innocent civilians are dead and our Government said it would blink while this occurred. By God, did it blink in a big way. It is suffering the consequences of this ever since.

Let me return to the Minister's fine philosophical phrases, with which I said I agree. We are very concerned about the arms race, for instance. Other countries, including Norway, are also concerned. Norway has a large investment reserve, assembled on foot of its having North Sea oil. Being the wise, social-democratic country that it is, it decided not to splurge the reserve on crazy projects but to establish a fund for the long-term future of its economy. This is the petroleum fund and amounts to €75 billion, give or take €10 billion. The fund must be invested according to ethical principles acceptable to the people of Norway. The fund administrators have divested themselves from Wal-Mart, for instance, because they felt its labour practices were wrong, and they refused to invest in Honeywell because they believed it had a direct connection with the nuclear weapons industry, as opposed to the nuclear power industry. They have done this consistently and successfully and are becoming a force.

We have the National Pensions Reserve Fund, which is perhaps close to €10 billion in value. We have tried over and again to get the managers of that fund to accept similar ethical principles to the Norwegians but they have refused over and again. The Norwegian fund is growing and profitable but we will not follow suit because, when it comes to a choice between ethics and money, we will always choose money. The silly joke that the present Government believes "ethics" is a county in England is probably a bit too harsh but it has a certain amount of truth.

The rhetoric is wonderful but if one scratches one level below the surface, one will note that the Government will do nothing about ethical investments. It took us years to introduce the Control of Exports Bill, which will only have an inhibitory effect. The European Union has a stated objective of becoming a major player in the world armaments industry. This industry is responsible for the death of far more innocent civilians than the drugs industry. This is a fact and there is no arguing with it.