Cecilia Keaveney (Fianna Fail)

I have a BlackBerry which I use to receive e-mails. I appreciate the point about the courtesy of listening to speakers but I also appreciate that the Houses are geared up for Internet in order that we can e-mail and participate in that way. I do not know if that was what the Minister of State was doing.

In compiling my report, I have examined the situation in Bosnia, Cyprus and Armenia. I should be in tune with what is happening in the North. An issue that arose in another committee is the attempt to install a gas pipeline from eastern to western Europe. After World War II, Britain, America and a third country dumped weapons at sea but they will not say where they are. We are trying to install a pipeline but we cannot get information on where these chemical weapons are located. This could potentially cause a problem. I am a member of the British-Irish Interparliamentary Body and I ask everybody in the British Government and Parliament to explain what is wrong with giving the people of Ireland a chance to put their past behind them by allowing them to examine it. I acknowledge it is painful and difficult, but the problem is that it is so currently because they cannot get the information. All sides have experienced pain owing to what has happened over the past 40 years. Unfortunately, the pain continues. Contrary to what Senator White stated about the bodies not being found in the bushes, there is still a situation where Mr. Paul Quinn and Mr. Andrew Burns have almost been among those bodies in the bushes. We must put an end to these activities and people must be accountable for their part in the deeds.

I want to mention the issue of Councillor Eddie Fullerton. I mentioned my father already on the Order of Business. My father was at a county council meeting with Councillor Fullerton the day of the night that he was killed. What went on and who was involved is a sore point with the people of Donegal.

Having spoken to Ms Nuala O'Loan and others about the case of Mr. Seán Brown who was killed in the North of Ireland, I am astonished at the lack of information that can be obtained when people do not want to give the information.

Senator Walsh spoke of setting up committees in the Oireachtas and in Westminster specifically to deal with this. The Taoiseach had a good relationship with Tony Blair, the previous British Prime Minister, yet we could not get the information. I would like to think that no committee would be set up unless we thought we were going somewhere within a certain length of time and with a certain credibility from the highest ranks within both the British and Irish Governments. We do not need lip-service. This, in a certain way, is lip-service unless there is a decision coming out of it.

Given that there is to be devolution of justice and other areas to Northern Ireland in May or shortly afterwards, I ask that the Northern Ireland Executive, on assuming the powers, be given all records held in Whitehall of every event and that it would be the committee, with a committee in this jurisdiction, that would deal with not only the findings of what occurred but also the other issues that are still outstanding and waiting to be resolved.

There is no point in handing over devolved powers to the Northern Ireland Executive and not handing over certain information as well. If it is handed over, the Executive is then in a position whereby it is entitled to deal with the difficult issues itself. There has been too much analysis of what information can be given.

The clergy in Ireland have stood up to a difficult issue in terms of child sex abuse and much information has now been given freely by the Archbishop of Dublin. The matters before the House are of equal importance and of greater importance to the people concerned in that people have been murdered. It is time for the Governments to give up all information on all these issues because we cannot stand over a peace process that deals only with part of the reality of what occurred.

I again sympathise with those who have gone round in circles for many years on this issue. I hope the fact we continue to raise the issue gives them confidence. We intend to support them in finding a conclusion to their quest.