Ned O'Sullivan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday we learned of the sad passing of Mr. David Cornwell, the famous writer who was better known, of course, as John le Carré, who gave great joy to many people over long periods writing about spies in the Cold War setting, such as, for instance, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spyand Smiley's People. Many of those novels have been turned into films and series on television. He followed a long line of English literary types, such as Graham Greene, who had some experience of the secret service and it showed in what they wrote.

As someone who has been following the Moscow rules all my life and has been known to use a dead letter box every now and again, I feel sadly his passing, which brings me neatly onto something. When the Berlin Wall fell, I believe many of us, in our naivety, thought the Cold War was going to be over as well and that kind of murky espionage would be consigned to the history books. How wrong we were.

I read an interesting article in The Sunday Timesabout the attempted poisoning of Mr. Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader in Russia, or out of Russia, I should say, because he cannot be there for most of his time; he is constantly under threat. That followed, of course, the blatant poisoning of the husband and wife team in Salisbury a couple of years ago when well-known KGB hoods came over and poisoned these people and escaped scot-free. They gave some story that they came over to look at the spire of the cathedral and it was a big laugh at the time. What amazes me is my left-wing colleagues in these Houses are quick to raise human rights issues when it comes to normal western democracies. There is, however, a desperate resounding silence out of them when it comes to any of the doings of Mr. Putin and the thugs who work for and support him. It would be no harm if we invited the Minister for Foreign Affairs in here at his convenience to give us a talk on how he sees the threat Russia poses to western democracies, not alone Belarus, Ukraine and Croatia. Anywhere people try to stand up for their rights, they are squashed. It is not a joke; it is a serious matter.