Mary White (Fianna Fail)

I twice visited the jockey, Christy McGrath, in prison in the UK at my own expense. I spent over €20,000 of my money going to Colombia.

Many Members will not know that when Mary Robinson was UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the lack of human rights in Colombia was the highest item on her agenda. The Colombian Government was described to me by the UN in Bogota as bordering on a neo-totalitarian regime. It is as guilty as FARC in its lack of human rights. Colombia has been at civil war for the past 40 years; one side is bad, the other is worse.

If my two colleagues on the other side felt as strongly about Íngrid Betancourt as I did about the other case, they would go tomorrow and meet the Colombian vice president, Mr. Santos. I met him five times to plead the case for the three Irishmen in prison in Colombia.

The three Irishmen were found guilty in the public trial of helping the FARC. I was at the seven court sessions which lasted over a year and a half. They were found innocent of training the FARC as there was no evidence. The judge who led the case——