Joe O'Toole (Independent)

I welcomed the intervention of the Minister for Foreign Affairs last night when he exhorted the authorities in Burma not to take action against the people demonstrating there. It is an issue which resonates greatly with people in this country. We saw similar action as far back as the time of O'Connell in the 1820s and in Northern Ireland in the 1960s. Gandhi also made it a feature of modern politics in the previous century.

The operation of fighting for civil and human rights through people power is the essence of democracy. We should welcome the call by the Minister for Foreign Affairs but we should also ask him to strengthen that position and support the call from Gordon Brown that there be a special meeting of the UN to impose sanctions, if necessary. We also should be prepared to take on China on this issue because it is the country which is buttressing the appalling regime in Burma. Will the Leader arrange for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to attend the House to debate an issue which is very important in terms of our understanding of how democracy should and does work?

On a related issue, I ask that the House would direct its attention to the fact that what is effectively a black school opened in north Dublin this week. I do not want a long debate about Catholicism, the Roman Catholic Church or the lack of planning. Instead, I would like a debate on the kind of community which it is our aspiration to create in this country, whether that is an intercultural society which will be judged by the engagement between one culture and another, or one subculture and another, or one religious group and another. This is surely what we are trying to achieve rather than trying to give separate space to separate groups in a manner more resonant of apartheid than anything else. I am not accusing anybody of that, and I do not want this to be a blame game, but I would like Members to give their views. If we are disturbed by this or if we find it does not suit us or does not fit our vision, we should say so without having a go at the Government, patrons or management, although such questions must be also addressed. We need to deal with this issue in stages.