David Norris (Independent)

I will be very positive today and give a very strong welcome to the revised plans that have been submitted for the Mater Hospital. I raised this issue on many occasions and sought an international panel to review it. We have now come to the end of the line as far as this is concerned. I am delighted these new revised proposals have been submitted and in particular that Harry Crosbie has been put in charge. If any person in this city can get things done it is Harry Crosbie, who showed great courage in continuing with the Grand Canal theatre and other developments. It is extraordinary that there are now alternative sites springing up all over Dublin like mushrooms. The danger is that we will not get a hospital at all if we do not go ahead. A revised plan has been submitted and I think that it has been accepted or will be accepted. Let us go ahead and do it.

I am sometimes critical of the Government, whatever one is in power, and recently I have been very critical in correspondence with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Eamon Gilmore. Today, I wish to publicly salute him for his courage in addressing the situation in the Middle East and to ask the Deputy Leader for a debate on it. He has said, and it is the first time that anybody has said it, that we must consider a boycott of goods from the illegal Israeli settlements in Palestine unless the human rights protocols attached to the Euro-Med agreement are properly observed. He has gone further, and under questioning, he said that he would consider it appropriate for Ireland to use its situation, while it holds the Presidency of the EU, to advance the issue. The matter is being stalled by Germany because of its bad conscience having destroyed one Semitic race in Europe it has now set about the systematic assistance of the destruction of another Semitic race in the Middle East. It is very refreshing that our Tánaiste has had the courage, as a Deputy Leader of a small country, to stand up for a very, very oppressed people.