Seanad debates

Wednesday, 4 July 2007

1:00 am

Photo of Brendan RyanBrendan Ryan (Labour)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire agus tréaslaím leis. Tá an ardú céime atá faighte aige le déanaí agus a fuair sé roimh an todhchán tuillte aige le blianta. Tá súil agam go n-éireoidh go geal leis.

Am I looking at the same proposal that everybody else is talking about? We have limited information. The measure was laid before the Houses of the Oireachtas yesterday and we are agreeing on it today. I have not had the chance to read it. If somebody wants to make the point that that is my fault, so be it, but it is not the way the Houses should do their business. The only detail we have is what is in the Minister of State's script. While not reflecting on him personally, it is full of vague generalisations and platitudes rather than assurances.

The measure represents the allowance by all the governments of the European Union of a gross and one-sided invasion of the privacy of citizens of the Union travelling to the United States. We have made no similar request of the United States. This clearly implies that the possibility of a threat to the United States from Europe-based travellers is deemed vastly greater than the possibility of a threat to the citizens of Europe from anybody based in the United States. The United States had Congressmen who yahooed, so to speak, along with representatives of the provisional IRA when we were at the receiving end of IRA terrorism. When we were at the receiving end of IRA terrorism there were members of the United States Congress who ignored that fact and turned them into romantic freedom fighters, yet we did not demand some form of curb on US citizens travelling to Ireland and some sort of extra information about them.

The United States was subjected to an horrific and profoundly wrong attack. It seems that since then the rules have all changed and this is profoundly wrong. This sort of material should be introduced in this House by way of primary legislation, debated on all Stages in both Houses of the Oireachtas, amended as we see fit and ultimately agreed, instead of being passed through the Oireachtas with any of us who are unhappy with it having five minutes in which to speak against it. Why is it not a reciprocal arrangement? What sort of spinelessness is at the core of the European Council where it would not say to the United States Government, "That is OK. If you believe that is necessary for the security of the United States, then quite clearly it is necessary for the security of the European Union." This is not done because the United States would not tolerate such an intrusion into the privacy of its citizens when they are travelling abroad. The United States has demanded a right to intrude into the privacy of citizens of the European Union, an intrusion it would not allow anybody else to impose upon its own citizens.

I have nothing particular to hide but I know that activists in the environmental movement in the United States have been hauled off planes by officials of the Department of Homeland Security on the grounds of spurious suggestions that they were a threat to the security of the plane. These are people involved in campaigns of non-violence whose basic ethic is non-violent.

The Patriot Act demanded the right to go into every library and find out what books every citizen was reading. We are now supposed to accept the American assurance that this data will be treated with pristine respect for the privacy of people who are not citizens of the United States. This assurance comes from a government which claims it had the right to tap the phones of its own citizens without any reference to any judicial oversight. Why should I trust a government which will not respect the rights of its own citizens? Why should I trust a government that will not allow the same arrangement to apply to its own citizens that applies to everybody else? Why should I trust a European Union — including our own Government — which capitulated before this pressure? The answer to those questions is there is no reason I should trust them and therefore I am opposed to this motion and will call a vote because I believe it is profoundly wrong and an extraordinarily dangerous capitulation to pressure to dilute, not just little details, but the principle that the privacy of individual citizens in a free democracy should not be compromised other than in accordance with primary legislation. The idea of this assault on privacy by means of a statutory instrument, passed through this House on the last day of our sitting and a day after it was laid before the House, is profoundly wrong and I am opposed to it.

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