Eugene Regan (Fine Gael)

President Václav Klaus said: "Because of our communist past, we Czechs are extremely sensitive to the idea of freedom and democracy", and he draws certain conclusions from that. In his thinking Václav Klaus is caught in a time warp. We drew different lessons from our experience of, as Senator Quinn would say, a "Big Brother", and that has worked to our advantage. We joined a Community that is based on the rule of law, on democracy and express values, more expressly set in the Lisbon treaty than in any previous treaty. It is also enshrined in the treaties of the EU that there is a respect for diversity among peoples and member states. To make this comparison with the oppression of the former Soviet Union and the atrocities of that regime, including the suppression of peoples and countries that sought freedom within it, is simply perverse.

Václav Klaus is a great man. He played an important part in the fight for freedom in Czechoslovakia, but he has got it wrong. I do not believe anything he has said has any lessons for us in Ireland. It is not a question of breaching protocol or of intervening in a debate in Ireland. It certainly should not be a question of restricting access to the press. We should hear what he has to say and refute it, but the Government has not done that. It should say straight that we reject what he has to say, which has no lessons for us.