David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I see. I thank the Acting Chairman. I was misinformed in that case. However, my point survives. I have had things ruled out without explanation. One can sustain an argument that any amendment of any kind will create a cost on the Exchequer because plainly it does, even if one is reduced to saying there is a cost involved in printing the actual amendment. It is nonsense.

Let us pass on to the substance. I will not be long. I inform the Minister of State that, unfortunately, I must be somewhere else but I will read her reply with great interest. I do not mean to be rude. If I leave the Chamber I hope she will forgive me.

I would like this legislation to be expanded in a number of ways. I acknowledge that apparently this Bill is simply the implementation of various EU directives. It is really a kind of tidying-up exercise and therefore a short Bill. I am disappointed it is so limited, however. For example, it seeks to criminalise activities that constitute an offence in this country or an activity that takes place in a place other than the State which constitutes an offence under the law of that place. Why is this to be so only if the action constitutes an offence in the law of a certain place? There are actions outrageous to human rights that may very well not conflict with state laws. Why do we not have the Bill stating the offence to be one that constitutes a felony or a serious crime under the law of this land?

For example, I wish to table amendments on organ harvesting. I do not believe we have covered that matter, which continues. It is trafficking, not in human bodies but in parts of human bodies. In the case of China, for example, we know that wealthy people in India, the United States, or wherever, will pick up a telephone, make an appointment in hospital No. 1 in Shanghai and order a liver. There may be a whole raft of, say, 500 people in different prisons and a compatible liver will be found in prison No. 423. The authorities will do away with that person, keeping him technically alive until the liver is extracted, and then deliver the organ to be transplanted. That is barbarous and is a form of trafficking.

The other matter I wish to raise relates to human trafficking. We have much difficulty with the question of when human life begins. I would like to open the other end of that discussion for scrutiny. When do the rights attaching to the human person cease? We heard a lot of palaver about the bog bodies in the National Museum and were told we should give them a Christian burial. People did not know whether these were Christians at all but were determined to give them a Christian burial, which was nonsense. We have had the gruesome spectacle - against which I protested in this House - of an obscene exhibition of the naked bodies of people who may very likely have been murdered in China. I do not ask for this to be banned, although I would love to see it banned because it is disgusting. The people in question and their families had no right to object.

There is a simple way around this. No certificates were ever shown to prove where the bodies were acquired, but there is a very strong suspicion about their origin. Getting a DNA sample is very simple and does not damage the product, which is probably the way the originators see these unfortunate people who are dead. To get permission to mount an exhibition of human cadavers the proprietors of such an exhibition should be required to give a DNA sample to the Irish authorities in order that the relatives who may wish to claim these bodies, and who have a right under international law to do so, will be able to identify them. We should not have unidentified cadavers who were probably the victims of extreme human rights abuse having their lives taken because they were Tibetan, Falun Gong or whatever, or because they were criminals. It is not appropriate to have this kind of exhibition, which I consider to be part of human trafficking.

I am very glad of this opportunity and am happy and grateful that we were allowed a further opportunity to discuss this and to table amendments. I commend to the Minister of State the substance of the amendments tabled by Senator Ó Clochartaigh. I did not hear the earlier arguments and so cannot comment, but I imagine I would have agreed with them. I agree with Senator Ó Clochartaigh that it would be most helpful if the Minister of State were able to look over these and see which, if any of them, she would be able to support by way of Government amendment. That can create a cost on the Exchequer if it likes.