Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)

This is about notification. The provision in the legislation does not ban anyone from having a road haulage licence or a passenger transport licence. It requires people to inform the Minister when they fill in their application form that they have been convicted of certain crimes in the past. The opportunity is there for them to explain that those crimes were committed in a particular context, perhaps before the enactment of the Good Friday Agreement.

If I make any decisions on a matter such as this, I will take that into account. I see no reason to consider somebody who applies for a passenger transport licence or a road haulage licence and who committed a crime prior to the Good Friday Agreement but who has moved on since then and has not committed any further crimes not to be of good repute and to refuse a licence. The provisions in the legislation are not new. They are the status quo and are not something I have put into this legislation. I have no personal agenda in this regard.

Senator Ó Murchú was quite right that when we were going through this Bill, which unfortunately is emergency legislation because we are up against a deadline, we did not anticipate this issue arising at all. I assure Members, although they may not believe it, that there is no personal agenda here at all. We keep going back to the Good Friday Agreement which must be the guiding principle and light in this. The Good Friday Agreement provides for early release under licence. It does not expunge convictions and say these crimes were not crimes and did not happen. It just provides for early release. That is what we all signed up to in the referendum. Had the Good Friday Agreement provided for release without condition or said that these crimes were not crimes or these convictions are now expunged, would it have passed with the majority it did, in particular North of the Border where a very large number of Protestants voted "Yes"? I wonder whether they would have voted "Yes" in such large numbers if it had provided for an amnesty for those prisoners.

That is why the former Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, and others, in their wisdom, did not agree to that request for an amnesty and have not done so to date. In current circumstances, an amnesty might move us backwards and I will come to that in a second.

If there is a new agreement to follow up on the Good Friday Agreement, the St. Andrew's Agreement and the Hillsborough Agreement, that is fine but it has not happened yet. There is no agreement in favour of an amnesty in this State nor is there a consensus in favour of one. If new legislation is brought in to provide for an amnesty or to consider these convictions to be spent, then so be it but the Road Transport Bill is not the place in which to do that. If we are to decide to provide an amnesty or for these convictions to be spent, we need to have a proper debate about that and not have it in the context of a Road Transport Bill. It is inappropriate to do so.

There has been a great deal of talk about political prisoners and criticisms of individuals, including me, talking about the political prisoners and other people. With the exception of Senator O'Sullivan, nobody mentioned the victims up to now and there are still a many victims out there who are hurting very much. Many of them have not been able to move on in the same way as perhaps some of the political prisoners who have done very well since. They have not been able to move to the point of forgiveness.

Before one can forgive something, there must be apologies and acceptance that crimes were committed. Even if they were politically motivated, they were still wrong. Many people have been involved in struggles from Mr. John Hume to Mr. Austin Curry to Mahatma Gandhi. Their political motivation was very strong but it did not drive them to violence and require them to blow up children in shopping centres. Their political motivation was different and they chose a different course of action. Before the victims can move on, there needs to be an acceptance that political motivation is not a justification for the offences committed. I am glad the word "offences" was used because at least it is progress.