Rónán Mullen (Independent)

——to replicate the media's total inaction in questioning what UCC has done. There has been no media scrutiny of the lack of public consultation prior to the UCC decision. We do not even know whether they published the results of their own internal survey and nobody is asking the hard questions. I am not aware that anybody has even asked the Government what it thinks of the UCC decision.

In light of all this, I want to withdraw my request for the debate because I intend instead to bring forward a Private Members' Bill in this House for which I hope the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform will be present, which will seek to prohibit any creation of embryos for the purposes of research or any research involving or deriving from the destruction of human embryos. Given the great progress being made in the area of adult stem cell research, including induced pluripotent stem cell research, I hope I will have support from people on all sides of the House who must surely want a socially non-divisive solution to this very sensitive issue.

I ask also for a debate on Burma. This was the subject of a previous debate but I recently received some very eloquent correspondence from a Brazilian person living in this country on foot of an article I wrote in the Daily Mail about the plight of oppressed people, particularly Christian communities who are being oppressed throughout the world. The Chin people are being forgotten by the world community. They are suffering as a result of a very unusual famine that only occurs about twice in every century when there is an excess of bamboo which causes a plague of rats with consequent infestation and damage and consumption of crops. It is not the Burmese Government's intention to look after the plight of its own people in western Myanmar. I ask the Deputy Leader for a response on what the Government proposes by way of a debate whereby we can look at what we should be doing and what the concerned citizens of the world should be doing to draw attention to the plight of these oppressed people, many thousands of whom are now suffering and are in danger.