Dan Boyle (Green Party)

I support the call by Senator O'Toole for the Minister for Foreign Affairs to articulate to the House the Government position on the continuing illegal captivity of Íngrid Betancourt, the leader of the Colombian Green Oxygen Party and a former member of the Colombian national assembly. Her situation has some relevance to Ireland because the arguments she was making in Colombia related not only to the use of violence in the country's political system but also to the drug culture which causes subsistence farmers to resort to growing the coca plant, which is having an effect around the world and most perniciously in our country, as we have seen in recent weeks. These are added reasons to identify with her plight. As a country, we need to work towards attaining her freedom and ensuring the people in Colombia who are forced to engage in a drug trade that causes difficulty throughout the planet are given alternatives. We must move away from the United States-led war on drugs that has helped create this situation in countries such as Colombia in the first instance.