Rónán Mullen (Independent)

I commend Senators Ross, Ó Murchú, Hanafin and others on raising the issue of capital punishment. It is horrendous to think that such punishments can occur in the civilised world. It raises the question as to how Ireland can, as a nation, courteously but insistently disagree with other countries when they abuse human rights in various ways. During the Jubilee year, there was a beautiful symbolic gesture every time a person was freed from the death penalty or had his sentence commuted or when a country changed its laws for the better in that the lights were turned on around the Colosseum, that great symbolic place where so many innocents lost their lives in past millennia.

It is important that a country such as Ireland, which is small but which can be influential, make its voice heard. Sometimes this will have to be an uncomfortable voice. I regard Britain's abortion laws as barbaric. They should be a matter for discussion. Last year we spoke about human rights abuses in China and asked what our response should have been in the context of the Olympic Games in Beijing. It is important for small countries to have the courage to be awkward and recognise that the fact of their being small does not mean they cannot be influential.

I commend Senator Harris on his remarks. We really need to consider the economic crisis and issues relating to banking and debt through the lens of human dignity. This is why I very much welcomed the debate this morning on the nature of social democracy and what it has to contribute. The great traditions of Christian democracy, with their emphasis on the dignity of the human person and the importance of family life, have very much to say on the current crisis in which families are at their wits' end dealing with debt.

In so far as the discussion between Deputy Kieran O'Donnell and Mr. Pat Farrell on the rules-based approach to banking is concerned, it is very clear that we need rules. This goes back to Saint Thomas Aquinas and even Aristotle in that coercion was sometimes believed to be required while people were acquiring an appreciation for virtue. However, unless we accompany a rules system with the cultivation of civic virtue, we will be faced constantly with the problem of people getting around the rules. We need both a rules-based approach and a principle-based approach founded on a culture of civic virtue.