Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)
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Question 110: To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs his views on whether the Government should apologise for the action of Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, in offering his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler at the German Embassy; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2814/05]

Dermot Ahern (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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The declaration of Irish neutrality by the then Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, during the Second World War was widely welcomed across the political spectrum. As a result, the security and safety of the Irish people were protected throughout the most horrific conflict in human history.

In the operation of his policy of neutrality, Mr. de Valera, showing very great and courageous skills, worked closely with the British authorities, most often in secret. The full extent of this co-operation with Britain has only relatively recently become available.

In an article in The Irish Times on last Saturday, the former Taoiseach, Dr. Garret FitzGerald, said that it "is difficult for generations born since the Second World War to envisage the state of Irish public opinion at the time on the issue of neutrality". I would make the related point that it is equally difficult to judge the actions of leaders at the time by today's context. Mr. de Valera was, I believe, a political leader who was very conscious of formal protocol and it was this sense of formality, I suggest, that led him to offer his condolences at the German Embassy on the death of Hitler. I have absolutely no doubt that it signalled no sympathy whatsoever for the immoral and obnoxious policies of the Nazis. The secret co-operation with Britain, to which I referred, would clearly give the lie to any such accusation. I would add that I could not envisage any political leader today offering condolences in similar circumstances.

There is no country in Europe, or perhaps anywhere, which can claim to have acted in the face of the Holocaust as it would now wish to have done. It is important that we in Ireland acknowledge this. We must accept that Ireland was not in some way uniquely free of all traces of anti-Semitism. In particular, we also owe it to the millions who suffered and died in the Holocaust never to forget nor to diminish in any way the inhumanity and the evil which was prevalent in much of Europe at that time.