Israel-Palestine: Motion by Senator David Norris. 4th February 2004

Israel-Palestine: Motion by Senator David Norris.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach: I welcome the
Minister of State at the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Deputy Tom Kitt, to the House. He
informs me that the Minister will be here shortly.
Mr. Norris: I move:
That Seanad Eireann:
—commends the Government for its
balanced policy towards Israel/Palestine and
in the light of recent tragic events affecting
both communities and of Ireland’s
Presidency of the EU requests that the
Government use its position to ensure that
this problem remains a priority area for the
EU;
—notes with satisfaction the presentation
of the common EU submission on the
construction of the wall separating and
encircling the Palestinian population of the
West Bank to the International Court of
Justice;
—welcomes the presentation of a national
submission outlining Ireland’s views on the
matter; and requests that the Government
(1) ensure that Ministers Cowen and
Kitt continue to monitor the situation in
depth and in particular to continue the
practice of visiting both Israel and the
West Bank/Gaza,
(2) continue to raise human rights issues
with both sides, and
(3) maximise opportunities to support
the beleaguered inhabitants of the West
Bank and Gaza in their current distress
through humanitarian projects.
I have deliberately framed this motion in a way
that, with the help of the Leader of House, it will
not be challenged but will go through unopposed.
It is such a sensitive issue that it is important we
have consensus on it.
I have travelled backwards and forwards to
Israel and Palestine for the past 30 years. I have
a long-term relationship and we live very close to
where the recent tragic suicide bombing took
place. I would like particularly to draw the
Minister’s attention to something quite
important, namely an exchange of letters that
took place between myself and President Arafat,
whom I visited recently. There has been much
criticism stating that he has not properly
condemned suicide bombing. I wrote to him
thanking him for his hospitality and stated:
One matter however remains to which I feel
it is necessary to return — and that is the
question of suicide bombing which has
tragically resumed. While I appreciate the
suffering and distress to which the Palestinian
people have been subjected I feel that such acts
present a very serious barrier to progress. I am
convinced as are all the senior representatives
of the Palestinian Authority that I met that
such action is not only grossly morally wrong
but also politically counterproductive. Such
events merely provide an alibi for further
Israeli mistreatment. They also seriously
undermine the work that a number of us within
the democratic parliaments of Europe are
attempting on behalf of the Palestinian people.
With the help of Dr. Ali Halimeh who
transmitted this message directly to President
Arafat I received this morning the following
communication from Ramallah in which Dr.
Halimeh says:
I have been instructed directly by President
Arafat to state the following:
The President and the Palestinian National
Authority strongly condemn all attacks
against civilian targets.
Suicide bombings do not serve the
national interest of the Palestinian people.
We consider all attacks directed at
innocent civilians as terrorist attacks.
The Palestinian National Authority,
despite the total destruction of its security
infrastructure, especially in the West Bank,
has managed to intercept sixteen suicide
bombers in three months. We have alerted
the Israeli security forces to those who we
have failed to stop.
President Arafat assures you and the
people of Ireland of his commitment to do
everything possible to put a halt to these
attacks.
That finally nails the statement, frequently heard
on RTE, among other places, that President
Arafat encourages them. It is a very important
development and I draw the attention of the
House to it.
I am naturally closer to the Israelis than to the
Palestinians in the sense that this has been my
lived experience. I admire the Israelis for their
courage, their ingenuity, their technical skills, for
making the desert blossom and so on. However,
being close to them also means that I have
become more aware of the betrayal of the
humanitarian ideals of the Jewish people by the
present Government and its descent into moral
chaos. I do not believe that the use of murder by
a Government as an instrument of policy should
be tolerated in any society. However, I make the
point that the soul of Israel is not dead for the
ideals of Judaism are nobly incarnated by people
like Esru, a Jerusalem plumber, an ordinary man
who goes every Saturday to Hebron to try to help
the distressed people, taking the elderly to
hospital, collecting their medicine, trying to
rebuild their shattered homes and documenting
abuse like that of the Physicians for Human
Rights that I witnessed at Tulkarum,
distinguished consultant surgeons humiliated and
abused by their fellow Israelis guarding the
ghetto and kept waiting in the rain before they
are allowed into the camps where they perform
operations and bring in medical supplies. One of
these men told me that he has been coming every
Saturday for 15 years. I must also mention the
Israeli soldiers and airmen who have refused to
obey orders which they consider a violation of
human rights laws, protocols and international
laws. I quote from an open letter written to
Sharon by members of the commando unit
Sayeret Matkal and published in The Irish Times
of Monday, 2 February, in which they stated: "We
shall no longer take part in the deprivation of
basic human rights from millions of Palestinians,
we shall no longer serve as a shield in the crusade
of the settlements, we shall no longer corrupt our
moral character in missions of oppression."
That there are decent people of conscience and
of courage in Israel who plainly detest the road
towards full-scale ethnic cleansing, towards which
Sharon is speeding a frightened and confused
nation, can be confirmed also by the position
taken by one of the so-called refuseniks, Itai
Swirski, who said:
We are there [in the territories] to protect
5,000 Israelis in Gaza living amongst 1.2 million
Palestinians. How do we discriminate? We
treat the person by the colour of his skin, by
the colour of his ID card, by the colour of the
licence plate on his car, by whether he wears
the Kippa or not. If the person is not a settler
you will see him immediately as an enemy as
you will stop him at the check point and make
him wait for hours losing a large part of his
school time, not being able to reach a hospital,
his daughter’s school, his work place. If a
settler, he is gone in a minute.
These idealistic young people have been
denounced in the Israeli Parliament but have had
the moral courage to continue their protest
issuing public statements such as the following
which some have seen as treasonable but which I
see as the highest form of morality:
They say we did an antidemocratic act, they
say we damaged Israeli democracy. This
democracy has a backyard. This democracy has
a basement and in this basement 3.5 million
people are imprisoned, they do not take part in
this wonderful democratic show that is being
played on stage.
This democracy sends out soldiers to make
sure that those people stay behind the scenes
and do not interrupt the show. We will not take
part in this show anymore. International
protest must show solidarity with these brave
figures.
These are Israeli voices. It is also noticeable that
the four previous heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli
secret service, issued a joint statement describing
Sharon’s policy as catastrophic, as did a former
Israeli Army chief. Even more remarkable are
the activities of the Association of the Bereaved
in which Arab and Jewish people who have lost
family members to violence meet together to help
the process of personal healing and to advance
the cause of peace.
Israel was established in 1948 as a result of a
United Nations resolution. However, there was
another part to this resolution. This sought to
provide a state also for the original Palestinian
inhabitants from the remains of the divided land.
We are still waiting for that second shoe to drop.
It is astonishing that 60 years after Europe solved
its problem of conscience at the expense of the
Palestinian Arabs there is still no Palestinian
state. Of course, the surrounding Arab countries
did little to help, and their record is shameful.
In many instances they treated their Palestinian
brothers as badly or worse than the Israelis. Then
they fought a series of incompetent and wasteful
aggressive wars against Israel — an already
traumatised people. Although it was subject to
attack, Israel has also consistently abused its
position both in terms of morality and
international law in what has come to be known
as the Occupied Territories. I could quote from
any number of legal sources to show that
international protocols have been exceeded.
I have just returned from a visit with two
Oireachtas colleagues, Deputy Liz O’Donnell
and Deputy Simon Coveney, at the invitation of
Christian Aid. The experience of witnessing on
the ground the lived reality of the Palestinian
people even for a moment was instructive. We
were the victims of the capricious arrogance of
some of the soldiers and security guards at the
crossings although others among them were
decent, humane and friendly.
One of the points I would make is that forcing
young people into these situations and
encouraging them to treat without respect their
fellow humans is a violation of their moral spirit
and a degradation of everything for which the
state of Israel stood in the past and should
continue to stand for. How easy is the slide into
moral chaos. At the Erez checkpoint on the way
into Gaza, one of the young Israeli soldiers,
otherwise a pleasant lad, remarked: "I don’t
know why you are going in there. It is full of
Arabs." It was just a casual remark and the true
and awful significance only dawned on me later
upon reflection. I doubt it would ever dawn on
that soldier.
The Gaza Strip is a pathetic little rasher of land
surrounded on three sides by Israel. It is further
subdivided into three by Israeli military
installations at crossing points. These can be used
to isolate each separate area at the discretion of
the occupying forces. There are also 16 Israeli
settlements controlling 14% of the land mass.
Most of the coastal fishermen are so severely
restricted by the Israeli marine authorities that
they cannot fish. There is 62% unemployment,
the average industrial wage is less than 10% of
that of Israel, 80% of the people live beneath the
poverty level while 40% of the children are
undernourished and anaemic. Water resources
for the area are depleted by artesian wells bored
within illegal settlements which export water to
the irrigation projects in the Negev Desert.
In Gaza we witnessed the wholesale
destruction of houses for strategic purposes, the
laying waste of farm lands, bulldozing of
greenhouses and farmers corralled behind electric
fences watching impotently as their crops rotted
on the trees. We managed to get caught in one of
the arbitrary Israeli closures that take place even
within the Palestinian territory while a gun battle
was fought out over our heads. Although
frightening I was glad that we had the
opportunity to experience some of the lived daily
reality of the civilians within the Gaza area.
When we visited a local school, on the
headmistress’s desk there was an array of shell
casings and ash trays full of spent bullets. These
are the everyday playthings of the children in the
school yard The drawings of young children from
six to 18 show the same horrifying vividly caught
images of dismembered bodies, rockets appearing
from the sky blowing the roofs off buildings,
injuring and maiming women and children. Nor
can this be discounted as propaganda. As the
Bible tells us, "Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings shall come forth truth", and this is what
these children live with. Where will they be in ten
years time if not in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Qaeda
or something even worse?
On the coastal strip we met a fisherman and
his wife with eight children living in tiny Soweto-like
cramped conditions, the smell of sewage
heavy even in the primitive kitchen. This is how
people live there. Yet in these awful
circumstances they retain their dignity,
cleanliness and courteous hospitality. One must
be careful not to blame the Israelis entirely for
this because in many cases poor conditions
existed before the Israeli occupation. However, it
was partly as a result of Israeli action that work
on the sewage ponds was halted so that now on
the outskirts of Gaza city people live literally in
their own excrement. Children are affected by
bronchial asthma and upper respiratory tract
infections and this is something for which Israel,
the European Union — which started the project
but lacked the guts to finish it — and the
Palestinian Authority, whose corrupt practices
helped to syphon money away from the project,
all have a responsibility. To all of them it is a
moral reproach. I would like in particular to ask if
the Government during its Presidency of Europe
could not at least do something about the
situation by providing decent sanitary
arrangements or at least stopping the overflow of
raw sewerage.
At Qualqilya, the wall bites deep into the heart
of Palestinian territory to throw a cement noose
complete with hostile machine gun posts and one
functioning exit to surround tens of thousands of
Palestinians. This used to be a positive interface
between Israel and Palestine and there were
many joint enterprise businesses. They are all in
the process of collapse, co-operation being
replaced by antagonism. The go-ahead young
mayor of this important urban region is being
undermined by constant harassment from the
Israeli side, while the extreme elements find the
discontent so caused to be fertile ground for
recruitment.
On this occasion we also visited a small
mountain village called Jayyus. While there we
met a group of farmers. One of the officials told
me that one of these old men of the soil who had
not wept at his son’s funeral had to turn away
as he was describing to an interviewer what was
happening to his farmland — as his eyes filled up
with tears and he was ashamed. Love of the land
is something with which we in Ireland can
empathise.
I promised these people at the least that I
would tell their story through the Irish Parliament
to its people and let it stand upon the record. The
first man, through an interpreter, told me how on
30 November last his nine year old daughter
became seriously ill. He brought her to the gate
so that she could visit a doctor to get treatment.
He talked to the soldiers. They said that orders
were not to open the gate even at the advertised
opening times on that particular day — bear in
mind this is not a border, it is people imprisoned
deep within their own territory. He was told that
the keys were with a roving military vehicle. He
ran over to the car which swerved to avoid him
but which would not stop. He waited for the
authorities. A military car arrived, stopped 20
metres from him and now the girl had a very high
fever. They telephoned the doctors and one
came, but when he wanted to give the girl an
injection through the fence he was prevented, so
he threw over a box of tablets instead. Luckily
she survived.
A second man similarly had a son, four years
old, who was very sick. There were many people
waiting at the gate. Soldiers pushed them back.
He waited 15 minutes, but again was refused
permission to let the car through. Soldiers told
him to carry the child but it was too far. He said,
"The boy will die". To this the soldiers replied
that they did not care. He then laid the child on
the ground in front of the vehicle and said: "This
is my son. It is your fault if he dies. If he does die
I will kill you." After an hour and a half they
eventually allowed him to take the child through.
The child luckily survived.
A third farmer told of 43 students going to
school the previous day. It started raining at
about 12 o’clock. The children were kept waiting
in the rain for one and a half hours. The children
even touched the electric fence to try and draw
attention to their plight, but nobody came.
Eventually a guard arrived and after another 20
minutes they were allowed through. This happens
virtually every day when there are instances of
police chasing and firing at Palestinians.
One well established farmer we met in the
previous village took us to the fence so that we
could see his incubators. Some 4,000 chicks died
in one day and 7,000 on another day because they
are not allowed to visit the plant to see to
essentials such as food, water and heat. Now his
brother lives in a shed on the premises at risk of
his life.
During our brief visit we had a meeting with
some Irish Jewish families who have chosen to
make their life in Israel. The response to our visit
was quite mixed, some being actively hostile. One
of the most interesting guests was not Irish, but
married to a Cork man. She was from Bratislava
originally and carried the terrible tell-tale mark
of a tattoo number from Auschwitz on her wrist.
She told us that when she was sent to Auschwitz
she was selected by the infamous Dr. Mengele
who tapped her with his riding crop, brought her
forward and said to her: "But you are not Jewish.
You are too beautiful with your blond hair and
blue eyes." She, however, confirmed that she was
Jewish. He then asked her age and she replied,
"13". With a subdued but powerful emphasis he
said into her ear: "You are not 13, you are 16,
repeat this after me, ‘I am 16 years old’ and if
anybody asks you your age, you say you are 16,"
and she did. This was how she escaped when all
the children under 16 were gassed.
She told me that every time there is a bomb in
Jerusalem she has nightmares. She sees again the
camps, the dogs and the brutal Gestapo officers.
She also said she sympathised with the plight of
the Arabs but, she said, "What are we to do? We
only want to live."
It is very difficult to respond in the light of such
testimony. As a Christian one can only be
humbled and shamed by what was inflicted upon
such innocent decent people. However, I would
also have to ask: would her nightmares not have
been worse if she had come with us and seen the
wall and the ghetto, for such it is, that has been
created by Jewish people into which they have
put their Semitic cousins, the Palestinians? If she
had seen the concrete watch towers and
automatic machine gun emplacements, the
guards, the uniforms and the dogs, could she have
borne it? I believe this is one of the problems in
Israel, that many decent people cannot confront
what is being done in their name by the Sharon
Government and some of its predecessors
because if they did, their whole moral universe
would collapse.
The Israeli Government collaborates with them
in their blindness. I gave an example the other
day of the wall at Tulkarm which is four storeys
high and of grey concrete from the Israeli side. It
looks like and is felt by most Israeli civilians to
be a noise barrier. With regard to the infamous
wall, few people who have the experience of
driving along its course could accept this primary
function of security. If it was it would be along
the green line, the 1967 border. It reaches
insidiously into Palestinian territory which is
already sprinkled with spots and looks, on the
map, like it had an attack of measles.
Presently under construction, apparently with
the collaboration of firms with connections to
Irish companies such as Cement Roadstone
Holdings, the wall when finished will have a
devastating impact on about 60 towns, villages
and refugee camps. I regard any such
collaboration by Irish companies as infamous,
shameful and indefensible and I call upon
Cement Roadstone to investigate the situation
and take immediate steps to disinfect itself from
such a reprehensible undertaking. I thank the
Leas-Chathaoirleach for his indulgence. I will
complete my contribution at the end of the
debate.
Mr. Norris: I would like to thank the Minister
and the Minister of State and all my colleagues
who took part in what was a very important
debate. I have not changed my position. I
continue to state where I stand, fully in support
of the human rights of ordinary people on both
sides. When the state of Israel violates those
human rights I will speak out and hope I will be
heard. With regard to the business of settlements
and Mr. Sharon, we must be very careful. I
travelled down there with a very reputable Jewish
scholar who has written extensively on this
subject and he predicted Sharon’s actions two
weeks ago saying: "This is exactly what Sharon
will do. It is a bargaining ploy. Be careful."
Every settlement is illegal under the United
Nations. Why should one, two, three or four be
allowed? The position is unsustainable and half
the time in these so-called
settlements there is nobody, just
empty buildings. The other matter is
the point raised by Senator Henry — the
demographics. Sharon knows perfectly well there
are elements within the Palestinian side, for
example, who will now say: "Let us give up.
Surrender is the best form of attack. Let us say
we cannot have a state; it does not work. We will
all go in with Israel." Then Israel is overwhelmed
because it is faced with the problem of whether
it becomes totally dictatorial or whether Israelis
recognise the Palestinians and become a minority
in their own Jewish state. That is the problem
Sharon faces, so we must be careful with him
because of the cosmetic arrangements he makes.
We have a powerful weapon in the European
Union, the association agreement with Israel,
which is a trade consensus. That is where it bites
and that is where it will hurt. There are human
rights protocols attached and I believe there is a
strong case for activating them. With regard to
the suicide bombings I am not going to go over
that. I have said what I had to say apart from
this: I know when that woman, a beautiful young
lawyer, killed herself, awful as that deed was it is
not enough just to condemn it. One has to ask
why these abnormal events happen. How is it that
a young woman with a law degree and her life in
front of her commits such an act? We must ask
why, not to excuse it, but to delve into the
reasons. When one asks this question, one
discovers that her brother and her cousin were
shot in front of her and her father, when dying of
cancer, was refused palliative treatment. He was
stopped all the time at the gate. She watched him
die in agony. I am not excusing her act, but
putting it into context.
As a former academic, I believe there should
be a comparative review of sentencing policy in
the jurisdiction of Israel as between Jewish and
Arab citizens. There is a discrepancy and it is a
reproach to the Israeli bar council that it has done
nothing about. I would like to return to the
business of the wall. Some 220,000 people are
affected directly, representing a third of the
population of Palestine. On visiting this region,
both sides have a tendency to ask what lessons we
can show them from our experience in Northern
Ireland. The parallel is salutary — four hundred
years after the plantation of Ulster, we are still
dealing with its malignant consequences. At least
now we have learned and there is progress. One
reason for this is the doctrine of parity of esteem,
which has not been accepted by the contending
parties, especially the Israelis, whose government
appears to have declared war, not on a state, but
on its people and whose proud boast of having
made the desert bloom has now been replaced in
the territories by the horrible reality of turning
orchards and olive groves back into desert.
If one takes the parallel with the North
seriously and tries to imagine the Israeli-Palestinian
situation and its conditions being re-enacted
north of the Border, this would involve
the bombing of the Divis Flats by F-16 aircraft
every time a machine gun poked out of a window,
the surrounding of Dundalk by a concrete noose
and its isolation from the rest of the Republic,
with all the attendant restrictions on its
population and the demolition of half of west
Belfast because of supposed IRA contact. It
would be much better if, instead of attempting
to degrade the Palestinian population further, the
Israeli Government made every attempt to bring
them up to the level of infrastructure, income and
employment that used to be enjoyed before the
intifada in the state of Israel.
Mr. Sharon frequently says the problem with
the process is there is no partner. This tends to
refer to Mr. Arafat. However, the absence of
partnership could equally be laid at his door. On
any occasion when there was a possibility of
peace breaking out, Mr. Sharon was careful to
sabotage it by a target assassination which
frequently went wrong and caused multiple
civilian casualties. After the recent suicide
bombing, which was widely and rightly
condemned, an Israeli Government spokesman,
Mr. Gissin said: "The rest of the world should
now sit back and let us do as we need to do to
defend ourselves."
I sincerely hope this advice is not heeded and
is smartly rejected. There could be no better
recipe for disaster. Let us recall what happened
when Mr. Sharon infamously stood back and let
the Christian militia in to butcher the unfortunate
Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila. It is wise, also,
to be careful of repeated and quite dishonest calls
made by Mr. Sharon on the Palestinian Authority
to disarm Hamas. Let us recall that Hamas was
established with the assistance of covert Israeli
funding as an early means of destabilising the
Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In so doing,
they sowed dragons teeth. Is it reasonable to
expect a police force whose police stations have
been repeatedly bombed and whose personnel
are forbidden by the Israeli occupiers to carry
weapons or even wear uniforms in directing
traffic to confront armed radical elements? As I
said on RTE recently, it is like expecting them to
go out in their underpants and peg snowballs at
heavily armed fanatics.
If there is to be a resolution of this terrible
conflict in the medium term, positive steps,
however small, as the Minister of State said, need
to be initiated now. During the week, I attended
a talk by the Cypriot Foreign Minister in the
Institute of European Affairs. Speaking on the
Cyprus problem, he said that in order to make
progress both sides must cut their losses, turn the
page and develop a new vocabulary. This is the
best advice I could give to both sides in the
continuing tragic dispute in Palestine-Israel.
Finally, I thank Christian Aid for making this
trip possible and to say that if I learned anything
it is the necessity for people of conscience, be
they Israeli, Palestinian, Arab or Irish to travel
through these hot spots and bear witness to what
is happening so that the worst excesses may be
stopped. I also ask in particular that the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, and the
Minister of State at the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Deputy Kitt, keep this matter close to the
top of the agenda during the Irish Presidency and
make a point of visiting not just Jerusalem but
also Ramallah, the terrible trajectory of the wall
and the squalid militarised conditions that now
exist in the West Bank and Gaza.
Question put and agreed to.

Humanitarian Issues in Post-War Iraq: Motion by Senator David Norris. 11th June 2003

Humanitarian Issues in Post-War Iraq:
11th June 2003
Mr. Norris: I move motion No. 29:
That Seanad Eireann calls on the Minister
for Foreign Affairs to use his good offices to
ensure that the United States and the United
Kingdom Governments meet their absolute
moral obligation, as well as their legal obligation,
under the Fourth Geneva Convention
to provide the finest medical care and rehabilitative
treatment for all the civilian casualties of
their recent war in Iraq as a matter of the greatest
urgency.
This has been agreed by this House, despite the
interventions of the Department of Foreign
Affairs, which came to light this morning in discussions
on the Order of Business. I found it
interesting that it is still not prepared to face the
truth about this war. Apparently, officials in the
Department of Foreign Affairs objected to the
motion they thought I was putting down —
No. 28 — on the basis of one word ‘‘occupation’’.
I ask the Minister of State to find out from his
adviser who wrote this stuff what he has against
the use of the word ‘‘occupation’’. What on earth
does he think it is, if it is not an occupation? This
is a nonsense. Let us tell the truth in this House
and let us have truth from the Department of
Foreign Affairs on this issue.
The coalition forces bombed the blazes out of
Iraq, they went in illegally, they pretended there
were weapons of mass destruction. Now, we cannot
use the word ‘‘occupation’’ because Iveagh
House is frightened of alienating the Yanks. Tell
truth and shame the devil. It is a disgrace that we
are not allowed tell the Irish people the truth and
the word ‘‘occupation’’ is unusable. Why is that
the case?
I deliberately chose motion No. 29 because it
was passed unanimously by the Joint Committee
on Foreign Affairs. I strongly deprecate this
resistance to the use of the word ‘‘occupation’’.
That was what happened. It was said in this
House by two Members on the Government benches.
I was also told privately that it was objected
to by Iveagh House. We must get our act in order
on this issue.
Dr. Mansergh: On a point of order, a Leas-Chathaoirligh,
I am not arguing with the substan-tive
point about occupation but it is not in order
to attack civil servants in the course of a debate.
A Government Department——
Mr. Norris: I am attacking an institution and I
am going to continue to do it as much as I like.
It is not up to the Senator to reprove me.
Dr. Mansergh: If Senator Norris is entitled to
make a point of order, I am too.
Mr. T. Kitt: I may be able to clarify this.
Senator Norris is wrong in what he is saying. At
the end of the day it is the Minister for Foreign
Affairs who is responsible for what is said here.
Mr. Norris: In that case the House has been
misinformed.
Mr. T. Kitt: I refer the Senator to my speech in
which I used the terms ‘‘occupying powers’’ and
‘‘coalition provisional authority’’ which is actually
part of the UN Resolution.
Mr. Norris: Fine. Why was there an objection?
In that case the House was misinformed this
morning.
Mr. T. Kitt: I have never intervened in this
House before and it may be wrong of me.
However, I do not want the Senator to go off at a
tangent. He is going down the wrong route here.
Mr. Norris: I am glad of that correction,
because certainly the Official Report will show
that was what we were told this morning.
Mr. T. Kitt: I accept responsibility for that.
Mr. Norris: I am very glad for that clarification
and I accept it.
There were a whole series of issues that were
put down in our names, such as the use of Shannon.
We were told the reason was weapons of
mass destruction. Iraq has the highest rate for the
agglomeration of cluster bombs in the world.
That is certainly worrying.
With regard to the position of the United
States and of this Government on the war in Iraq,
I wish to cite the following statements:
Simply stated there is no doubt that Saddam
Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction
— Dick Cheney, 26 August 2002.
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production of
biological weapons. — George Bush, 12 September
2002.
If he declares he has none, then we will know
that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading
the world. — Ari Fleischer, 2 December 2002.
Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam
Hussein had the materials to produce as
much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent. — George Bush, 28 January 2003.
We know that Saddam Hussein is determined
to keep his weapons of mass destruction,
is determined to make more. — Colin Powell,
5 February 2003.
We have sources who tell us that Saddam
Hussein recently authorised Iraqi field commanders
to use chemical weapons — the very
weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
— George Bush, 8 February 2003.
So has the strategic decision been made to
disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction
by the leadership in Baghdad? I think our
judgment has to be clearly not. —Colin Powell,
8 March 2003.
Intelligence gathered by this and other
governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq
regime continues to possess and conceal some
of the most lethal weapons ever devised. —
George Bush, 17 March 2003.
Well, there is no question that we have evidence
and information that Iraq has weapons
of mass destruction, biological and chemical
particularly ...allthis will be made clear in the
course of the operation for whatever duration
it takes. — Ari Fleischer, 21 March 2003.
There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam
Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction.
— US General Tommy Franks, 22 March
2003.
We know where they are. They are in the
area around Tikrit and Baghdad. — Donald
Rumsfeld, 30 March 2003.
The former UK Foreign Secretary, Mr. Robin
Cook, said in the last week:
We were told Saddam [Hussein] had weapons
ready for use within 45 minutes. It is now
45 days since the war has finished and we have
still not found anything.
It is plain that he did not have that capacity
to threaten us, possibly did not have the
capacity to threaten even his neighbours, and
that is profoundly important. We were, after
all, told that those who opposed the resolution
that would provide the basis for military action
were in the wrong. Perhaps we should now
admit that they were in the right.
The motion that I put down, with all-party support,
deals in a very bland way with the use by the
Minister for Foreign Affairs of his good offices to
persuade the US and UK Governments to live up
to their obligations to the civilian population of
Iraq. This was strongly supported by our distinguished
former Minister for Foreign Affairs,
David Andrews. When he took up that office, this
measure was passed unanimously. It is important
that we pass this motion.
We are all familiar with the pictures of little
Ali who lost both his arms and whose family was
wiped out. As a result of an intensive international
campaign, he was transferred to Kuwait
where certain rehabilitative procedures were
engaged in, but what about all the rest of the
people? What about the morality of the situation
which we all witnessed live on television where,
on foot of rumours that Saddam Hussein was in a
particular restaurant, a couple of thousand pound
bombs were dropped on a civilian house and an
entire family wiped out for no good reason? We
condemned on the Order of Business the murder
by the Israelis today of a Palestinian activist, but
what about these people and what about the situation
they face?
There are points in the Minister of State’s
speech which I very much welcome such as his
congratulations to the various aid agencies, the
Red Cross, UNICEF, the WFP, Concern, GOAL
and Tro´ caire. He also indicates the catastrophic
fall in the human development index of Iraq.
That is all very important and it is important it
should be said. He also pays tribute to the heroic
work of the mainly Iraqi personnel of these
organisations — the fact that they certainly saved
lives. I am very glad he said that.
However, I cannot believe that Afghanistan
and East Timor are being cited. Those are classic
hit and run operations — certainly Afghanistan
is. They went in, they walloped that country for
their own reasons, they have now skited off and
the world’s attention has moved away from that
country. Hamid Karzai controls about seven
miles around Kabul and the Taliban and warlords
are in control of most of the rest of the area.
Poppy production in that country has quadrupled.
What are we talking about? That is not
satisfactory.
The Minister of State and our Government
played an important supportive role in East
Timor. That was marvellous, but again world
attention has shifted. The place is devastated.
There is no infrastructure and the Minister of
State knows that well.
Dr. Mansergh: We have a development office
there.
Mr. Norris: I know that. I am talking about the
situation there. Senator Mansergh need not be so
neurotic——
Dr. Mansergh: I am not neurotic.
Mr. Norris: ——that he makes a knee-jerk
reaction to everything I say. I know something
about the situation in East Timor. If Senator
Mansergh thinks it is satisfactory, he should go
there and take a look at it.
Dr. Mansergh: I have been there. Has the
Senator?
Mr. Norris: Then the Senator should go back
there.
Dr. Mansergh: Has the Senator been there?
Mr. Norris: I was arrested on the way in
because my comments were not so bland as to
please the Indonesia administration.
With regard to the incidence of disease, while
diarrhoea is a simple disease to treat, large number
of children are dying from it in Iraq. Some
70% of all child deaths recently in Iraq have been
diarrhoea related. Dysentery and typhoid are also
becoming a significant problem and this is partly
due to the bombing of the water and electricity
supply infrastructure.
In a recent UNICEF newsletter there is a picture
of a young girl, Ayat, picking grains of rice
out of sewer in front of her house and washing
them so that they can be sold in order to supplement
the family income because they are
starving. That is a classic method of transmitting
disease.
I did not get into East Timor because I was
arrested. I am honoured to have been arrested
and not to have been allowed in. However, I have
been to Baghdad and I have been to the children’s
hospital. I would like to tell Members what
Maura Quinn has to say in her report about the
situation there. She wrote:
I visited the main paediatric hospital in Basrah.
The doctor brought me around the over crowded
wards in which up to three mothers
and their babies shared the same bed. We visited
each mother and children to hear their
story. Eventually we came to a very ill baby,
attached to a drip. He was seven month old
Mohammed, the first child of his 20-year-old
mother Nabila. He weighted 3.5 kg, less than
half his target weight. He was also suffering
from pneumonia and diarrhoea. The doctor
told me there was nothing further he could do.
I sat with Nabila and we watched her beautiful
son die. I raged at the waste of his life, while
she, in a dignified way, appeared to accept his
death as inevitable. News of Mohammed’s
death spread quickly. Many of the other
mothers came to her bedside. Again, the
unnatural acceptance of this baby’s death. One
of them asked me, the foreigner, ‘‘How many
more of our children have to die?’’
That is the question we should be addressing
today. How many more of these children have to
die? Can we not exert pressure on the people who
helped create this situation to engage in some
remedial action?
I know that Saddam Hussein was a monster
because I was one of the people who said it over
the past 20 years and protested at Halabja when
the west was supplying him with the gas and the
Government was supplying him with meat for his
army. I was more or less a lone voice protesting
at that time, so nobody need question my credentials
about this. I listen to the media and I hear
the media in Iraq now saying, Saddam Hussein
was bad but this is worse, and it is not over yet.
It is oil that is at the back of this entire matter.
There are also outbreaks of cholera. In Basra,
there are 66 confirmed cases of cholera, with
three people having died from the disease. Of the
66 cases, 79% are children under five years old
and 59% of the victims are girls. There are also
clinically confirmed cases of cholera in Nassariya
and Missan, but these cases have yet to be confirmed
through laboratory tests. This is due to a
serious lack of the required medical equipment in
the south and throughout Iraq as a whole. Dysentery
and typhoid are also becoming a real problem
for children. Dysentery is spread through
contaminated water and food. The bacteria lodge
in the intestines of a child and erode the intestinal
wall, leading to bloody diarrhoea. Typhoid, which
is also spread by contaminated food, is being seen
throughout the capital as well. The current worry
is that prior to the war and the collapse of the
health system there was rigorous surveillance of
typhoid, but now there is none. There is no
reporting and no surveillance.
I wish to raise the education system in Iraq
which is referred to in the UNICEF newsletter. I
listen with interest and compassion to what we
are told about some of our students who have to
use an outside lavatory. I will outline the current
situation in Iraq. The newsletter states:
The collapsed education system in an
example of how far Iraq has fallen. In a country
which values education highly, and had the
highest primary school enrolment in the
Middle East for both girls and boys, this hurts.
The 8,000 primary schools are in a dreadful
condition — no windows or roofs, school yards
under water, awash with raw sewage, rat infested
and in some cases without electricity,
sanitation or water.
Yet we bellyache about students in Ireland in one
or two cases having to use outside lavatories.
What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
We should certainly attempt to address this
problem.
I wish to refer to the problem of landmines.
During three weeks in the past month there were
500 injuries and 80 deaths of which we know. This
is the subject of one of the earlier motions I
tabled. The spokesperson for the coalition said
that cluster bombs are not illegal — they are of
course but that does not matter, they can still lie
as much as they like. They are effective weapons.
There was equipment in and around built up
areas and accordingly the bombs were used to
take out the threat, knowing that these cluster
bombs primarily affect children and are illegal
under the Geneva Convention. There is no question
they are illegal but they are still used. They
are still there and they have not been taken away.
My colleague, Senator Lydon, in a most
interesting speech, said that our overseas aid
should not go towards the rebuilding of the infrastructure
because many other groups are involved
in that. We know them, they are the friends of
George Bush — Bechtell and Haliburton, these
people who incited the war, planned and conspired
to bring it about. It was not the intelligence
service. Let us put a stop to that myth. It was
not the intelligence services who lied; it was the
massaging, manipulation and misuse of intelligence
information by political leaders that led to
the situation where even the intelligence services
in the United States and the United Kingdom
could not stomach it and they started leaking
information. That is how we know what the truth
is.
This was a shameful war. I opposed Saddam
Hussein from the beginning. While I am glad he
is gone, I fear for the people in Iraq because it
will be another hit and run exercise, just like
Afghanistan. The media victory was won and
American citizens were persuaded that right was
on their side and so on. I pity those left behind
when the media move on. For that reason, it is
terribly important that this House continues to
monitor the situation for ordinary Iraqi citizens.

Iraq Crisis: Statements. 6th February 2003

Iraq Crisis: Statements. 6th February 2003.
Mr. Norris: I welcome the Minister of State,
Deputy Tom Kitt. I am glad that he is here
because he is a decent man with firm liberal principles.
It is dangerous to use the word ‘‘liberal’’
in the United States of America at present. It was
not with surprise but with cynicism that I discovered
that a motion I tabled last week under
Standing Order 29 was not regarded as an urgent
matter by the Seanad. Such rulings need to be
questioned.
Many people who have spoken against the
looming war in Iraq have been challenged to
place their credentials on the record and perhaps
I should do so before I give reasons for my opposition
to it. Unlike the overwhelming majority of
those who place themselves in the camp of the
warmongers, I have opposed Saddam Hussein
from the beginning. I believe that I have locus
standi in relation to this issue. For example, I was
the only Member of the House to oppose selling
beef to the Iraqi army in the early 1990s. While
Senators on the Government benches at the time
told me that my position might have been a moral
one, they asked whether Ireland could afford to
adopt it. As it turned out, we did the immoral
thing and when Saddam Hussein welshed on the
deal, the taxpayer ended up with a bill of more
than £100,000 to add to the immorality of the
Government’s actions.
I went to Baghdad two years ago as a member
of an all-party delegation and had a stand up row,
face to face, on human rights issues with the for
mer Foreign Minister, Dr. Tariq Aziz. I pointed
out to him that his regime was not exactly virginal
in terms of aggression but I also pointed out that
when they fired their Scud missiles across the borders
at Israel, the only good thing about it was
that they could not shoot straight and most of the
out-of-date and ineffective missiles landed in the
sand. It is absolutely absurd to suggest, when ten
years ago at the height of his military strength he
could not even land a missile in Israel, that
Saddam could attack New York. It is nonsense. I
also smuggled into Baghdad over £2,000 worth of
drugs for the children’s hospital in Baghdad.
Therefore, I have earned the right to speak with
some sympathy for the Iraqi civilian population.
Saddam Hussein is a monster, something on
which we can all agree. I know he tortured
people. There is plenty of evidence
12 o’clock that he is psychopathic. He murdered
his two sons-in-law after guaranteeing
them safe passage back from Switzerland but
who put him there? It was the Anglo American
axis which inflicted him on the unfortunate Iraqi
people in pursuit of their own foreign policy aims.
It was also they who armed him with chemical
and biological weapons which were used on the
Kurds in 1988. Moreover, those of us with clear
political memories will recall that after this — in
full knowledge of Saddam’s crimes against his
own people — Mr. Donald Rumsfeld — the Dr.
Strangelove of the present American Administration
— actually went to Baghdad and
embraced Saddam, knowing him to be a mass
murderer.
Senators may recall the notorious incident of
the ‘‘Supergun’’, which was actually capable of
landing chemical, biological and nuclear war heads
on Tel Aviv. It was built by a British firm,
Matrix Churchill, with the connivance of the then
British Government, as was subsequently proved
in a series of law cases. In other words, the very
forces posing today as advocates of human rights,
the American and British Administrations, are
clearly complicit in Saddam Hussein’s crimes
against his own people and his neighbours,
although now, opportunistically and with revolting
hypocrisy, it suits them to attempt to play the
moral card.
Saddam was given the green light for the
invasion of Kuwait. Let us be frank about Kuwait
also: looking for its border, one finds a line starting
at the coast, going straight up, turning at right
angles, turning again at right angles and hitting
the coast. It was drawn by a British cartographer
in 1919, neatly enclosing massive oil reserves for
the benefit of European and American oil
interests. It is not a naturally occurring border.
Kuwait was historically part of Iraq, about which
there is no question.
Although their hands are already drenched in
the innocent blood of Iraqi children, Messrs.
Bush and Blair seem to want more. I say now
from the Upper House of the Irish Parliament
that if they really want to know whether Saddam
Hussein still has chemical, biological or nuclear
weapons, let them look at the invoices of their
own commercial industries in their own countries
where they will find the records of what they sold
to him. In this sentiment I am joined by a fellow
Dubliner, a very remarkable man, Mr. Nelson
Mandela, on whom we were honoured to confer
citizenship of the city. That is what he has to say
about it and he knows something about imprisonment,
torture and international injustice.
Who is the real terrorist? Saddam Hussein’s
evil wings have been clipped to such an extent
that he can no longer realistically be regarded as
a threat. The record, however, of the Bush regime
is interesting. It welshed on the International
Criminal Court, the very court to which Senator
Mooney correctly drew our attention and to
which we were honoured to have a senior judge
appointed from this country. The Bush Administration
did not want any part of it, which suggests
that it wants Americans to be allowed to
commit war crimes with impunity — they will not
subject themselves to its operations.
The Bush regime welshed on the Kyoto Protocol
in order that American industry could continue
to pollute the world. It welshed on the
agreement negotiated under President Clinton
that sought to contain the development of chemical
and biological weapons in order that America
could continue their manufacture. Anthrax is
being manufactured at 70 sites in the United
States. It indicated in recent weeks its readiness
to use low-yield nuclear bombs in the attack on
Iraq. Most certainly, this regime inspires terror.
Are the people of Baghdad not terrified as they
wait, helpless and afraid, for the thing they know
they cannot stop? They are terrified even to use
municipal bomb shelters in the light of the fate
of those unfortunate civilians incinerated in the
Amiriyah shelter during the Gulf War. I found it
astonishing to hear a self-styled expert on RTE
radio the other day referring unchallenged to
‘‘some civilian casualties’’ in this incident. Four
hundred people, including seven members of one
entire family, were incinerated by one of the
‘‘bunker-buster’’ bombs that landed on the
shelter.
Let us have no more Orwellian newspeak. If
we are to commit filthy acts, let us acknowledge
the filth of what we are doing. Leaks in recent
days from US sources indicate that the first
assault, even before the waves of hundreds of
missiles directed at Baghdad, will consist of
intense microwave radiation intended to interrupt
military communications. In view of what it does
to machinery, what will it do to the civilian population?
How would the population of Dublin feel
if they were about to be microwaved? We are
aware of the intense public campaign against
electricity pylons and mobile phone masts. Are
we to regard the Iraqi people as less than human?
After yesterday’s performance at the United
Nations, it is clear that there is no smoking gun.
The USA has, in fact, shown itself to be in contravention
of both the letter and the spirit of Resol
ution 1441 because it did not provide evidence of
mobile laboratories or the alleged infection and
death of 12 technicians to the monitoring team
under Dr. Blix. This requirement is contained
clearly and specifically in Resolution 1441: ‘‘All
Member States [are requested to] give full support
to UNMOVIC and the IAEA . . . including
by providing any information related to prohibited
programmes or other aspects of their
mandates. . .’’. The Americans have not done so.
It would be useless to apologise afterwards to the
estimated 500,000 civilian casualties who will be
affected almost immediately, most of them children.
Moreover, the fourth Geneva Convention,
which is also part of international customary law
and which, therefore, cannot be derogated from,
requires the proper protection of children in circumstances
of war. This is about to be flouted
once more in a myriad of ways.
I am not anti-American. I love what decent
Americans stand for and know there are many
millions of decent Americans who are strongly
opposed to the waging of this war. It is worth noting
that the democratically elected representatives
of more than 40 cities throughout the USA
have already passed resolutions against it. Moreover,
every major religious denomination in the
USA — except for the Southern Baptists — has
issued a proclamation questioning unilateral
action by the USA, including the United Methodist
Church, a religious affiliation claimed by both
President Bush and Vice President Cheney.
Let us look at America’s foreign policy record
of recent years. Let us recall the covert involvement
of sinister American forces in the overthrow
of the democratically elected Government of
Chile and the murder of its head of state, the late
Dr. Allende. Let us remember the unprincipled
use of drug money to destabilise the neighbouring
state of Nicaragua. Let us remember the
aggression against the people of Cuba in the Bay
of Pigs incident. Let us call to mind the fact that
in recent months we have once more had the
spectacle of the CIA attempting the overthrow of
a democratically elected South American Head
of State, President Hugo Chavez, in the interests
of American big business. To paraphrase a former
American President — it is the oil, stupid.
That is what this is about — not human rights.
Vietnam is now acknowledged generally as a
huge mistake which caused great loss of both
American and Vietnamese life. What use is that
acknowledgement to the dead? In Kampuchea,
up to 500,000 civilian citizens of a neutral country
were done to death by illegal bombing raids and
the architect of this, Henry Kissinger, has in
recent days had the gall to pop up as an expert
on Iraq.
With regard to American expertise on Iraq, I
recently had the pleasure of meeting one of the
Bush Administration’s advisers. A charming
gentleman, I asked him when he had last been to
Baghdad. He acknowledged that he had never
been in Iraq. I assumed he read the Iraqi news
papers, only to discover that he could neither
read nor speak Arabic. That is a big help.
The other allegation used to justify war against
the defenceless people of Iraq is that the regime
is complicit with the al-Qaeda network. This, as
anyone who knows anything about the Arab and
Muslim world, is complete nonsense. However
repulsive Saddam Hussein’s regime is to us in the
West, it is, at least, equally repulsive to Muslim
fundamentalists precisely because of its secular
nature.
It is imperative that this war is stopped. I
acknowledge the courage of those in the peace
camp at Shannon and, in particular, their apparent
willingness to go to Baghdad to act as human
witnesses by placing their own lives in jeopardy.
If I thought that action such as that of Mary Kelly
would help to stop the war or prevent the deaths
of innocent Iraqi civilians, I would drive to Shannon
airport this minute with a hatchet on the back
seat of my car. I remind the House of the
judgment in the Trident Ploughshare case in Liverpool
some years ago when a woman peace activist
who disabled a Hawk fighter, that was being
sold by the British to the Indonesians so they
could paste the unfortunate East Timorese into
the ground, was held by a jury to be worthy of
acquittal because what she did, although technically
illegal, was calculated to prevent an infi-nitely
greater crime.
Mr. Bush has ignored the basic message of the
arms inspectors — that they need more time.
They have indicated that the Iraqi regime is now
co-operating. Mr. Bush derides this as passive co-operation.
What precisely does he expect? Is it
realistic to expect a creature of the CIA such as
Saddam Hussein willingly to incriminate himself?
Would this not in itself be a violation of one of
the anchors of the American Constitution, the 5th
amendment, under which no American citizen
can be required to incriminate himself or herself?
What of the aftermath of the war, when the
UN has once more been subverted and bypassed?
It is understood that depleted uranium is to be
used, as it was in the Gulf War, with disastrous
consequences for many ordinary Iraqi citizens. I
have seen the effects of this in the unusual rates
of cancer among women in the Basra region. I
have also visited hospitals where scores of children
were dying of leukaemia and simultaneously
deprived of the necessary treatment which might
give them a change of survival.
General Colin Powell, that apostle of human
rights who, although black himself, helped to
institutionalise discrimination against gay people
in the American army, has indicated that the
United States will ‘‘administer the Iraqi oil fields
in the interests of the Iraqi people’’. I will believe
that when I see it. You can bet your last dollar
that the oil fields will be administered in the
interests of American business and the American
economy. We will have a situation just like Afghanistan
where, having installed a criminal regime
to terrorise the people, Americans took against it
and tried to squash the monster they themselves
had created, but in fact merely left the unfortunate
civilian population worst off except for a
small area around Kabul. Do any of us here know
about the human rights of the ordinary Afghans
or of the continuing abuse of women in all centres
outside Kabul? This is the kind of fate that awaits
the Iraqi people and this is yet another among the
many reasons why all decent people must oppose
this war.

Higher Education Review: Statements. 22nd February 2005

Higher Education Review: Statements.
22nd February 2005
Mr. Norris: I thank my colleague, Senator
Henry, for making time available and Senator
Mansergh for his courtesy in cutting short his
interesting remarks to allow us to participate. I
welcome the Minister to the House. It is appropriate
as, like me, she was a teacher.
I have read a report of a speech made in Cork
by one of this report’s principal authors, Professor
Shattock. He highlighted two major issues,
namely, the massive increase in funding and the
large scale internal reorganisation and restructuring
of universities. The first may cause difficulties
for the Minister and the second may cause difficulties
for academic staff. It is true and has been
acknowledged on the other side of the House that
there was a period of cutbacks totalling 14%, 6%
of which has been recouped. We are still in a situation
of shortfall.
The figures are stark. We are 14th of 26 OECD
nations. We are often told about our wonderful
educational system and spending but this ranking
is factual. Overall investment in education is
below the OECD average and investment in
research and development taken as a percentage
of the wealth of the State lags well behind both
OECD and EU averages. The report points to
low numbers of international mature students
and students from traditionally disadvantaged
areas. We must either make further investment
or adjust the way in which finance is used.
This review coincides with a readjustment of
university management structures. This will cause
concern as increased business presence in university
governance is called for. Expecting universities
to be efficient and to take account of the so called
"real world" are issues but if they are
driven too far in that direction there will be considerable
dangers. What is the cost-benefit analy
sis of imagination, for example? In the old days
it was the university versus the marketplace. Perhaps
that was wrong and we should try to ride
both horses simultaneously but it would be disastrous
if we simply introduced the values of the
marketplace wholesale to universities. There are
examples — Queens University, Belfast, closed
its department of classics and music departments
are suffering the same fate in Britain. The president
of the students’ union, Francis Kieran, said:
"We must be aware of the commercialisation of
third level education as, at the end of the day,
attending college — sentimental as this may
sound — is meant to be about broadening the
mind and experiencing new ideas." He is absolutely
right. We must find a way to combine
these ideas.
A problem exists regarding fees. There are no
free fees, regardless of the intention to abolish
fees. If the point of this was to encourage individuals
from lower socio-economic areas into universities,
it has been a disastrous failure. The rate of
increase of participation in Irish higher education
by lower socio-economic groups has actually
slowed compared to the 1986-92 period when targeted
student grants were the policy instrument.
In other words, if they are targeted then the
disadvantaged are reached. A recent report
entitled Supporting Equity in Higher Education
shows a disparity of almost five to one — 79% to
21% — between the higher, professional socio economic
group and the unskilled manual work
group in total participation in third level education.
The current approach is not working.
When considering the result of money directed
from taxpayers, the benefit to the individual
student is a benefit to society as a whole.

Explusion of Senator David Norris from Seanad Eireann during Report Stage of the Trinity College Bill 18th April 2000

Mr. Norris: Will the Cathaoirleach tell me if
the House has a quorum?
An Cathaoirleach: Is the Senator calling a
quorum?
Mr. Norris: Yes, I am.
Notice taken that 12 Members were not present;
House counted and 12 Members being present,
An Cathaoirleach: As we have a quorum, I ask
Senator Dardis to continue with his reply.
Mr. Dardis: I am about to conclude because
there is not much point in——
Mr. Norris: I propose that the House take a
sos. It is extremely important we take this action
and it would be supported in a vote. We must not
force the University of Dublin, Trinity College,
to withdraw this Bill.
An Cathaoirleach: We are in the middle of
Senator Dardis’s reply on Report Stage.
Mr. Norris: I propose a sos and I am sure the
Leader will agree.
An Cathaoirleach: It is a matter for the Leader
of the House or for the Cathaoirleach to propose
a sos.
Mr. Norris: Perhaps the Cathaoirleach could
propose a sos. This is a serious matter and we
must ask that the House adjourn on this matter.
It is completely undemocratic——
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris must resume
his seat.
Mr. Norris: I am afraid I cannot do so. I ask
that the House be adjourned on this matter——
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris, please.
Mr. Norris: ——and I have the full support of
the University of Dublin in this.
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris is speaking
in a disorderly manner.
Mr. Norris: It is wrong that it should be rail-roaded
in this manner——
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris should
resume his seat.
Mr. Norris: ——on such a substantial issue of
academic freedom and intellectual integrity. On
that I am prepared to demand a sos.
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris, I am on my
feet and I ask you to resume your seat.
Mr. Norris: Will the Leader oblige me with a
reply to my request for a sos?
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris, I ask you for
the last time to resume your seat.
Mr. Norris: Perhaps Senator Dardis would also
agree to one. After all, this is my employer.
An Cathaoirleach: If Senator Norris will not
resume his seat, I must ask him to leave the
House.
Mr. Norris: I represent the University of Dub-lin
and it is most important to leave this matter
which is why I ask for a sos.
An Cathaoirleach: I ask Senator Norris to leave
the House.
Mr. Norris: I ask that the House be adjourned.
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Norris is being
disorderly.
Mr. Norris: I mean no disrespect to the
Cathaoirleach but this is an important matter——
An Cathaoirleach: Since you have persisted in
this disorderly manner, I must ask the Leader of
House to name Senator Norris.
Mr. Norris: ——which concerns the fate of the
university. If this Bill is voted through in the
amended form——
Mr. Cassidy: I move: ‘‘That Senator Norris be
suspended from the service of the House.’’
Mr. Norris: ——the university will have to
withdraw the original Bill.


Suspension of Member.
An Cathaoirleach: The question is: ‘‘That
Senator Norris be suspended from the service of
the House.’’
An Cathaoirleach: I now ask Senator Norris to
withdraw from the House.
Senator Norris withdrew from the Chamber.

The Trinity College, Dublin and The University - Second Stage Debate - 6th November 1998

Mr. Norris: This is an important and historic
day and the Bill is generally welcomed. There
were some battles on the Bill but those battles
are over. To a large extent, the representatives of
Trinity College won those battles. Senator Ross
and I voted against the Bill at a certain Stage to
serve a warning that where we held the balance
of power, we were not prepared to accept any-thing
other than full respect and guarantees of
intellectual independence and academic freedom.
Those concessions were generously made by the
Government. Every amendment I put down after
consultation with the board, the Provost, the fellows
and scholars was accepted.
There were some difficulties about the adoption
of one or two extra people onto the board
but that principle has, in a small way, been
yielded by the college. This Bill is a classic
example of a good accommodation. There is no
doubt that this is the best we could get and the
Bill has the generous support of the Department
of Education and Science and the Government.
It is unusual to introduce such private legislation
and the college is extremely grateful. The Provost
has assured me that the overwhelming mass of
opinion within the college —fellows, board, scholars,
staff and students — are in favour of the Bill.
The best way forward is to pass the Bill as quickly
as possible and tidy up this business.
The composition of the board is one of the
major points and the Seanad played an important
role on this issue. There was a drafting glitch.
Had Members on this side not discovered this
problem at the last minute and secured a sos so
that we could consult with the college authorities,
we might have had a permanent board of about
180 members. The higher the concentration of
academics the less amount of work usually done.
This is an important Bill which is welcomed by
the college. I am happy with the Bill. It is an
unusual measure and discloses a good degree of
co-operation between Government and the
university.
I am delighted to see references to her late
Majesty Queen Elizabeth I. She is very late —
she is gone for 400 years — but it is charming that
her title should be rehearsed. The Bill also refers
to some of her successors, such as Charles I.
These references add atmosphere to the Bill, as
does the Latin text of the college which I and my
colleagues were happy to attend. There was some
question as to whether rehearsing Latin was
appropriate as it is not one of the official languages
of the country but we are simply rehearsing
a section of the charter.
It has been pointed out to me by senior legal
experts that, technically, her late Majesty Queen
Elizabeth I’s successor, Queen Elizabeth II, is the
reigning monarch of this country. With the abdication
of her great uncle, Edward VIII,
uncrowned, instruments were passed at
Westminster and sent to all the dominion and
imperial parliaments for passing. When it arrived
in Dublin, Mr. de Valera, for his own reasons,
shoved it in the waste paper basket. The instrument
of abdication was never ratified by an Irish
Parliament. As a result, the abdication process is
incomplete and I am glad to tell the House that
Elizabeth II is monarch of Ireland. This will come
as pleasant news to many people.
The composition of the board is the most
important issue. There has been some movement
and two members from outside the college have
been accepted. This is a reasonable measure
given the contribution made by the taxpayer to
the college. The machinery adopted in the Bill for
the establishment of this person is reasonable, fair
and just. There is no overloading. For technical
reasons, the second member is unlikely to be
chosen because of the lack of machinery in terms
of local boards required to select such a person.
Some Members thought of trying to amend the
Bill but felt that that would be a redundant step,
might hold up the Bill and be academic, in the
worst sense of the word. I do not propose to hold
up the Bill any longer. We look forward to a rapid
passing of this important instrument which has
the overwhelming support of the students and
staff of the University of Dublin, Trinity College,
and which will be welcomed by all who are
interested in education. The more Trinity College
can copperfasten its position as an important part
of the university structure, the better for the education
of everyone in Ireland.

Mr. Norris: I wish to raise the composition of
the joint committee, something I have already
discussed privately. Will there be three Deputies
and three Senators? It would seem appropriate
to have representation from among those directly
connected with the university on the committee.
Will this be considered? There is a difference
between a vested financial interest in a company
and expertise, knowledge and background, something
all three University Senators have. It would
be quite appropriate for the three University
Senators to decide the matter.

Recognition of Domestic Partnerships Motion: 16th October 2002

Recognition of Domestic Partnerships:
Motion.

16th October 2002

Mr. Norris: I move:
That Seanad Éireann, in the light of the recent Equality Authority Report, requests the Government to give an assurance that it will either accept from the Independent benches or introduce on its own initiative legislation to cover the recognition of domestic partnerships. I welcome the Minister of State. I look forward to an interesting, positive and constructive response in the tradition of Fianna Fa´ il in these areas. The contributions of the former Minister for Justice, Mrs. Geoghegan-Quinn and the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, in the 2000 budget are examples. It is very appropriate for the Seanad to try to push forward social change in a non-confrontational manner. This issue affects a very large section of Irish society nowadays and it should not become a matter of partisan dispute. It is regrettable that so little notice is given of Private Members’ debates. I had hoped that people would have had more time to prepare for this debate. I received the Government amendment only this morning and I regret that it put one down. It kicks to touch in calling for us to wait until the relevant reports have been received. One of them has already been launched with a great fanfare. However, given that the third part of the motion commits the House to further review of the situation when the totality of reports has been produced, I will not force a vote but will accept the amendment because I believe in a constructive approach to these human problems. One report has already been published. It is very significant and I intend to refer to it in this debate. It has also been adopted by the NESC and taken on board by the National Economic and Social Forum, under the direction of Dr. Maureen Gaffney. I understand that substantial meetings have already taken place and that this group, under the provisions of the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, has requested feedback from the various Departments concerned, which are listed in the report as requiring to undertake certain things. Successful meetings have also been held with Secretaries General of a number of Departments, which is a very positive development. In the run-up to the last general election, Gay Community News, a very good and well-informed newspaper which may not have wide circulation among Members of this House, conducted a survey over a period of months of the various parties and their attitude toward items of particular interest to the gay community. With the exception of Fianna Fa´ il, every party positively endorsed partnership rights and said they would introduce legislation in this area. Some even went so far as to indicate they would include adoption. The stance of Fianna Fa´ il was neutral. It indicated it did not have a policy at this time, which I do not regard that as a negative stance. The junior party in Government, the Progressive Democrats, has committed itself to legislation. That is a very positive framework. I mentioned the question of the gay community. If only it was affected this debate would be rather narrow and I would not have put down this motion for this, the principal debate in the House on Wednesday evenings. However, the subject of the non-recognition of partnerships outside marriage now covers a considerable number of young Irish citizens who, for one reason or another, have chosen to establish their family units outside the conventions of church or even State marriage. I have a very helpful young American assistant who has produced interesting statistics. The birth rate for 2001 was a total of 57,882 babies, of which 18,049 — 31% — were born outside marriage. In the first three months of this year that has increased to 33%. That is the dimension of the problem we are dealing with. In other words, it is concerned with those who do not have the same rights as people who are married conventionally. The traditional wisdom in an Ireland that has now changed was that people should be penalised, especially financially, for attempting to make these arrangements outside the strict definition of marriage. However, in justice, fairness and in a spirit of social constructivism, it is wrong to continue this penalisation because when people have decided to create these relationships they need to be supported and given encouragement, in the interests of a stable community. The Seanad ought to be able to provide a framework for that. I have attempted to place this motion in this broad context because it is the best way to proceed. Members of this House had a series of discussions with the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, about the discriminations involved in inheritance tax and capital acquisitions tax, especially as it relates to the inheritance of property by those who are not recognised as spouses. We did not go into the question of what, if any, sexual relationships existed between them because that is a private matter and none of our business. The Minister was persuaded of this and introduced a very helpful measure in budget 2000. That was won because it arose in the context not only of specific gay cases, but of a general principle that affected unmarried people regardless of their sex in the unconventional arrangement or marriage. However, there is one thing that makes it more difficult for gay people and the discrimination far more intense because in the case of heterosexual couples there is always the option of marriage. That option is permanently foreclosed for gay people under the present legislation. As far back as 1967, when Declan Costello produced his constitutional review, even though there was no hint or suggestion that people were considering this kind of same sex relationship recognition, the report said it would not in any circumstances accept it. There was a strong traditional commitment against it, which was unfortunate. Now, as we know, an increasingly large number of people are caught in this situation, whether or not they are gay. As legislators, and especially in this Upper House, we are required to try to make provisions for social change we observe on the ground and this social change has been observed. However, this does not mean a weakening of support for marriage. I am very happy to support marriage; it is a splendid institution. Nevertheless, nowadays in the 21st century, other forms of relationship equally deserve, if not the respect of the majority of the people, at least to be protected against penal discrimination. I am not talking about gay marriage. I am so tired of that phrase because it is easy to mock. It establishes a ludicrous picture of two hairy legged men with handle-bar moustaches in white skirts holding hands as they walk up the aisle. It is very easy to dismiss that, but behind it is the human reality of people who are prevented from visiting their partner of 30 or 40 years in hospital, debarred from inheriting, penalised in income tax terms or are sacrificed in terms of mortgage. I am not interested in the ludicrous notion of marriage that is so easy to mock in the tabloid newspapers. I am interested in the tangible, practical benefits that flow for citizens, be they gay or heterosexual, from the institution of marriage. Without diminishing the status of marriage we must look at its inherent inequity because it is not extended to all people. There is a certain element of difficulty in this as I have sometimes criticised the Vatican, but now I am in a situation where I can criticise my own church — the Church of Ireland. The Bishop of Tuam recently issued an edict forbidding ceremonies of affirmation of the friendship and love of a lesbian couple. I thought that was extraordinary. I wrote to the bishops of the Church of Ireland some years ago asking them to interfere to stop Drumcree and they said they could not. They can interfere and intervene to stop a service that affirms love and friendship but they cannot apparently stop one that foments and spreads hatred and division. The day after I thought this, I listened to a charming priest of the Roman Catholic Church from Glasthule, accompanied with various sound effects, talking about the blessing of animals. He was blessing hamsters and goldfish and Great Danes.
Mr. Norris: Would it not strike one as a bit odd that they could not bless a pair of unfortunate lesbians along with the hamsters, goldfish and everything else? There is a kind of a disproportion there and it is rather a pity. I have already praised the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, for his work on capital acquisitions tax. The Equality Authority has produced a really important series of documents in addition to its report. I recommend the one to this House entitled Partnership Rights of Same Sex Couples because it deals with all the principal issues, such as adoption. One should not get side-tracked by the notion of gay adoption as it is a tiny insignificant element. There are only about 100 adoptions in the whole State every year anyway. I have not heard of one difficulty regarding a gay adoption but it is something that needs to be addressed in legal terms. There was a case recently of two young businessmen who had children as a result of some advanced technique in America using the sperm of one of the partners who is the natural father, which left the rights of the children and also of the partner in abeyance in legal terms. This is a very rare occurrence but it should be addressed by the law. We are not suggesting we are paving the way for widescale gay adoptions. Then there is the question of force majeure. If one is not married to somebody who is hospitalised because of a serious illness or accident, one is not taken into account. Those who saw that wonderful film ‘‘Philadelphia’’ will recall the scene between Miguel, the boyfriend played by the famous Spanish actor, Antonio Banderas, and the doctor treating Tom Hanks. He was Hanks’s long-term partner and wanted to talk about the situation but was told by the doctor that as he was not family he had no standing. He was at risk of being thrown out of the hospital after living with Hanks and caring for him for some 20 years. That also affects heterosexual individuals. In the Civil Service people are required to pay into a pension scheme which provides a benefit for widows and orphans that can only be claimed by people who are married in the conventional sense. What about the spouses of people who are outside — unmarried heterosexual people living together with children? They are debarred from a scheme into which they have paid. That seems to be a denial of natural justice. There is a whole section in the document to which I referred dealing with pensions. There is also the issue of tenancy rights. In this House we discussed in the past few years the situation of somebody who had been living in Pembroke Cottages. He had lived with his partner for 30 years and had contributed to the rent. When the partner died he was put out on the side of the road as his name had not been on the tenancy agreement. That was the law of the land and it was wrong. That is something that could be addressed. With the indulgence of the Acting Chairman I will leave this list and come back to it later on because I want to make a couple of suggestions that I would hate not to get looked at. I am grateful to the Leader of the House for the sensitive and intelligent way in which she has dealt with getting this issue on to the Order Paper. It is very interesting that we have just finished dealing with an item of legislation that came from a Labour Party initiative. That is a very good thing. Let us have more legislation that will give a profile to the Seanad. Let us have it, for example, come from the Independent benches or from an allparty group. I call on the House to provide the assistance of the expertise of draftspersons for legislation it deems to be serious because, by and large, we are not capable of doing it for ourselves. I ask the advice of the Leader and other leaders on this matter. I have established a small committee of expert people in this area to review the law with a view to producing some kind of decent legislation. At the moment we are reviewing all the European legislation in this area. We would like to do something that would do this House, the Government and the country proud. In the past we gained tremendous credit in Europe for some of our anti-discrimination legislation, much of which originated in this House, because we were advanced and we are traditionally seen as a rather conservative country. They were amazed at what we were doing. Let us amaze them again. The expert colleagues on my committee would be delighted if, from time to time, representatives of different parties from the Seanad were prepared to sit in on our meetings, even if just at the end to see if we can put together something that would give justice to a whole range of people who now live decent lives but outside traditional marriage.
Mr. Norris: I thank my colleagues for such a wide-ranging, excellent and well-informed debate. I am extremely heartened by it. I should have not doubted it would happen when I look at my old friends and colleagues and my new friends with whom I spoke on the telephone, two gracious women Members of the Seanad, one on each side of the House. I spoke to them last night and I am not at all surprised that we had such a good debate. The Leader of the House, Senator O’Rourke, as a Minister in May 1993, introduced the category of sexual orientation into the list of items covered by the Employment Equality Act, 1977. I remember, as Senator White says, the days when former Deputy Ma´ ire Geoghegan-Quinn was here. Mean-minded amendments were being put about, but she nailed her flag firmly to the mast of equality. She said she would require cogent and clear reasons to impose discrimination against any Irish citizen. As the Senator said, that was the kind of republican view with which I could find myself completely in agreement. I want to put this discussion in a wider context than that of the gay issue. I share Senator Minihan’s feelings about the centrality and importance of the family. Nothing that gives others outside that convention support and help would in any sense diminish the family. In fact, it would strengthen it because it would bring us all into the same category and we could all encourage each other in our different family structures of love. Lesbian and gay people suffer disproportionately. According to this excellent publication by the Equality Authority, Partnership Rights of Same-Sex Couples, lesbian and gay couples have no guarantee of fair treatment under the law because legally their relationships do not exist. The vulnerability experienced by all couples during times of death or serious illness of a partner and the anxieties involved in child-rearing and child custody are all exacerbated for same sex couples. My colleague, Senator Henry, quoted what she thought was the Constitution but was actually the 1916 Proclamation, which mentions cherishing all the children of the nation equally. It is chilling to hear that a certain section of society — let us forget that they are lesbian or gay —has no guarantee of fair or equal treatment under the law. This is from an agency established under law by this Oireachtas. That must give us pause for thought. I want to outline a few areas where there is a commonality of interest between gay and lesbian people and those who are heterosexual and outside marriage. What is striking in this book is that so many of these discriminations are shared. For example, it states that under the Family Law Act, 1995, and the Family Law (Divorce) Act, 1996:‘‘following a judicial separation or divorce, a portion of the pension may be calculated and allocated to the spouse who is not a member of the pension scheme. By definition, this facility obtains only in relation to married persons.’’ This means that not only gay couples but also everybody outside marriage is inhibited in the full exercise of their rights under this legislation, which was passed as recently as 1995. There is a certain equality in social welfare payments until the death of one partner. The social security system then starts to discriminate and survivors’ pensions are payable only to the lawful spouses of deceased contributors. This means that a woman and her children could be discriminated against in exactly the same way as a gay couple. That is to be greatly regretted. The legal rights of a spouse include one half of the net estate as a ‘‘legal right share’’. The report states: ‘‘There is no provision in the legislation 381 Recognition of Domestic 16 October 2002. Partnerships: Motion 382 to entitle a same sex partner (or an unmarried heterosexual partner) to a legal right share, irrespective of the length of the cohabitation.’’ This refers not just to gay people but also to everybody outside marriage. Then there is protection against disinheritance and intestate succession. Outside marriage, where somebody dies without a will, the surviving spouse has no entitlement — again, this covers all people outside marriage. Then there are restrictions on the transfer of a family home — the famous Family Home Protection Act, 1976. That only applies inside marriage. If a person has lived with somebody for 20 years and had six children with them, it still does not matter — he or she is not consulted under the Act. It is exactly the same if one is a partner in a gay relationship. I want to make the point again that these issues seem to hit with monotonous regularity not just at gay people but also at everybody outside marriage. In the old days marriage was virtually universal. The continuing increase in births outside marriage may be regrettable and certainly shakes old fogeys like myself who are used to a more traditional arrangement, but just over one third of all births in the last quarter were outside marriage. How are we to protect the people concerned and their children, who are also citizens? On the question of cohabitation contracts, there is a celebrated case — Ennis v. Butterly — in which the judge found that this kind of thing was dreadful because it would undermine the family. That is a caricature of the kind of attitude taken by Senator Minihan. It was a very bad judgment. I do not see how cohabitation contracts could possibly undermine anything. I know that is not what Senator Minihan means. We will have decisions such as this in court unless we, as legislators, make changes. For that reason, I respectfully do not agree with one or two of the points made here this evening. To suggestions that we might pick a little bit here and a little bit there and make a little adjustment here and do a bit of a tweak on inheritance I say, ‘‘No’’. We must take a central approach because the problem is a whole series of rights from which all those outside conventional marriage are debarred. This should be dealt with in a single clear and specific Act. To show Members the extent of discrimination which exists, which we really did not realise in the past, I will give the example of simple income tax. Married couples get specific benefits — 12, for the record — from which everybody else is debarred. There is a higher limit on the standard rate tax band for married one income families. Where both spouses are working, the standard rate tax band is twice the value of that of a single person. There is a home carer’s allowance for one income families and double the mortgage interest relief limit available to a single person for a principal private residence. Trading losses incurred by one spouse can be set against the income of the other spouse. The two businessmen who had the children in California are very remarkable business people, but if one of them gets into trouble, he cannot write off his losses against the income of the other. Why not? It has nothing to do with sex — it is about money. Let us forget what people do. Perhaps I am unusual, but I hesitate to speculate on what virtually everybody else does sexually. I really do not want to know. I do not spend my time obsessing about what my colleagues in the Seanad do after about 11 p.m. when they get home to bed and hope they do not speculate about me, because it would be a nauseating prospect in the extreme.
Mr. Norris: These matters are private and should be left so. There are public aspects such as tax, inheritance and the home in which the couple lives. Further benefits for married couples include tax relief for a spouse for VHI and other qualifying payments made for the other spouse and tax relief for one spouse on gifts made by the other. Medical expenses incurred or defrayed by one spouse can be claimed by the assessable spouse. Tax relief can be obtained by one spouse in respect of a person employed to take care of the incapacitated other spouse. These are very human things. Why should two people who have lived together for so long not be able to get some support when one is trying to provide medical succour to the person he or she loves and has loved for many years? For married couples, there is tax relief for part-time third level educational fees and training course fees paid by or for the other spouse. Service charges paid by one spouse can qualify for tax relief in the hands of the other spouse.
Mr. Norris: I will finish with one more quotation from this book, two sentences which put the whole matter in context:The income tax system is weighted in favour of the married couple. Unmarried couples, irrespective of their sexual orientation, are taxed as single persons. Thus, where only one of the couple works, the single standard rate tax band will apply, with no allowance being made for the unmarried partner who is not working. I thank you, a Chathaoirligh, for your indulgence and all my friends and colleagues in the Seanad for an excellent debate. Let us move forward and have this debate again. Let us urge the Law Reform Commission to report as speedily as possible and take up Senator O’Rourke’s suggestion that we make sure the Oireachtas nominees to the NESF are good people. I hope this will happen — I am sure it will. With our small, ama383 Cardinal Healthcare 16 October 2002. Longford 384 [Mr. Norris.] teur committee we do have a certain first-hand knowledge of the issues. I would be honoured and delighted to arrange, if possible, even one meeting with representatives of all the parties to see if we cannot get this important, non-confrontational issue put through the Seanad. This is a much more appropriate House for it to go through than the Lower House where it might fall prey to partisan concerns. Amendment agreed to. Motion, as amended, agreed to.

Israel-Palestine: Motion.
4th February 2004

An Leas-Chathaoirleach: I welcome the
Minister of State at the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Deputy Tom Kitt, to the House. He
informs me that the Minister will be here shortly.
Mr. Norris: I move:
That Seanad E´ ireann:
—commends the Government for its
balanced policy towards Israel/Palestine and
in the light of recent tragic events affecting
both communities and of Ireland’s
Presidency of the EU requests that the
Government use its position to ensure that
this problem remains a priority area for the
EU;
—notes with satisfaction the presentation
of the common EU submission on the
construction of the wall separating and
encircling the Palestinian population of the
West Bank to the International Court of
Justice;
—welcomes the presentation of a national
submission outlining Ireland’s views on the
matter; and requests that the Government
(1) ensure that Ministers Cowen and
Kitt continue to monitor the situation in
depth and in particular to continue the
practice of visiting both Israel and the
West Bank/Gaza,
(2) continue to raise human rights issues
with both sides, and
(3) maximise opportunities to support
the beleaguered inhabitants of the West
Bank and Gaza in their current distress
through humanitarian projects.
I have deliberately framed this motion in a way
that, with the help of the Leader of House, it will
not be challenged but will go through unopposed.
It is such a sensitive issue that it is important we
have consensus on it.
I have travelled backwards and forwards to
Israel and Palestine for the past 30 years. I have
a long-term relationship and we live very close to
where the recent tragic suicide bombing took
place. I would like particularly to draw the
Minister’s attention to something quite
important, namely an exchange of letters that
took place between myself and President Arafat,
whom I visited recently. There has been much
criticism stating that he has not properly
condemned suicide bombing. I wrote to him
thanking him for his hospitality and stated:
One matter however remains to which I feel
it is necessary to return — and that is the
question of suicide bombing which has
tragically resumed. While I appreciate the
suffering and distress to which the Palestinian
people have been subjected I feel that such acts
present a very serious barrier to progress. I am
convinced as are all the senior representatives
of the Palestinian Authority that I met that
such action is not only grossly morally wrong
but also politically counterproductive. Such
events merely provide an alibi for further
Israeli mistreatment. They also seriously
undermine the work that a number of us within
the democratic parliaments of Europe are
attempting on behalf of the Palestinian people.
With the help of Dr. Ali Halimeh who
transmitted this message directly to President
Arafat I received this morning the following
communication from Ramallah in which Dr.
Halimeh says:
I have been instructed directly by President
Arafat to state the following:
The President and the Palestinian National
Authority strongly condemn all attacks
against civilian targets.
Suicide bombings do not serve the
national interest of the Palestinian people.
We consider all attacks directed at
innocent civilians as terrorist attacks.
The Palestinian National Authority,
despite the total destruction of its security
infrastructure, especially in the West Bank,
has managed to intercept sixteen suicide
bombers in three months. We have alerted
the Israeli security forces to those who we
have failed to stop.
President Arafat assures you and the
people of Ireland of his commitment to do
everything possible to put a halt to these
attacks.
That finally nails the statement, frequently heard
on RTE, among other places, that President
Arafat encourages them. It is a very important
development and I draw the attention of the
House to it.
I am naturally closer to the Israelis than to the
Palestinians in the sense that this has been my
lived experience. I admire the Israelis for their
courage, their ingenuity, their technical skills, for
making the desert blossom and so on. However,
being close to them also means that I have
become more aware of the betrayal of the
humanitarian ideals of the Jewish people by the
present Government and its descent into moral
chaos. I do not believe that the use of murder by
a Government as an instrument of policy should
be tolerated in any society. However, I make the
point that the soul of Israel is not dead for the
ideals of Judaism are nobly incarnated by people
like Esru, a Jerusalem plumber, an ordinary man
who goes every Saturday to Hebron to try to help
the distressed people, taking the elderly to
hospital, collecting their medicine, trying to
rebuild their shattered homes and documenting
abuse like that of the Physicians for Human
Rights that I witnessed at Tulkarum,
distinguished consultant surgeons humiliated and
abused by their fellow Israelis guarding the
ghetto and kept waiting in the rain before they
are allowed into the camps where they perform
473 Israel-Palestine: 4 February 2004. Motion 474
operations and bring in medical supplies. One of
these men told me that he has been coming every
Saturday for 15 years. I must also mention the
Israeli soldiers and airmen who have refused to
obey orders which they consider a violation of
human rights laws, protocols and international
laws. I quote from an open letter written to
Sharon by members of the commando unit
Sayeret Matkal and published in The Irish Times
of Monday, 2 February, in which they stated: “We
shall no longer take part in the deprivation of
basic human rights from millions of Palestinians,
we shall no longer serve as a shield in the crusade
of the settlements, we shall no longer corrupt our
moral character in missions of oppression.”
That there are decent people of conscience and
of courage in Israel who plainly detest the road
towards full-scale ethnic cleansing, towards which
Sharon is speeding a frightened and confused
nation, can be confirmed also by the position
taken by one of the so-called refuseniks, Itai
Swirski, who said:
We are there [in the territories] to protect
5,000 Israelis in Gaza living amongst 1.2 million
Palestinians. How do we discriminate? We
treat the person by the colour of his skin, by
the colour of his ID card, by the colour of the
licence plate on his car, by whether he wears
the Kippa or not. If the person is not a settler
you will see him immediately as an enemy as
you will stop him at the check point and make
him wait for hours losing a large part of his
school time, not being able to reach a hospital,
his daughter’s school, his work place. If a
settler, he is gone in a minute.
These idealistic young people have been
denounced in the Israeli Parliament but have had
the moral courage to continue their protest
issuing public statements such as the following
which some have seen as treasonable but which I
see as the highest form of morality:
They say we did an antidemocratic act, they
say we damaged Israeli democracy. This
democracy has a backyard. This democracy has
a basement and in this basement 3.5 million
people are imprisoned, they do not take part in
this wonderful democratic show that is being
played on stage.
This democracy sends out soldiers to make
sure that those people stay behind the scenes
and do not interrupt the show. We will not take
part in this show anymore. International
protest must show solidarity with these brave
figures.
These are Israeli voices. It is also noticeable that
the four previous heads of Shin Bet, the Israeli
secret service, issued a joint statement describing
Sharon’s policy as catastrophic, as did a former
Israeli Army chief. Even more remarkable are
the activities of the Association of the Bereaved
in which Arab and Jewish people who have lost
family members to violence meet together to help
the process of personal healing and to advance
the cause of peace.
Israel was established in 1948 as a result of a
United Nations resolution. However, there was
another part to this resolution. This sought to
provide a state also for the original Palestinian
inhabitants from the remains of the divided land.
We are still waiting for that second shoe to drop.
It is astonishing that 60 years after Europe solved
its problem of conscience at the expense of the
Palestinian Arabs there is still no Palestinian
state. Of course, the surrounding Arab countries
did little to help, and their record is shameful.
In many instances they treated their Palestinian
brothers as badly or worse than the Israelis. Then
they fought a series of incompetent and wasteful
aggressive wars against Israel — an already
traumatised people. Although it was subject to
attack, Israel has also consistently abused its
position both in terms of morality and
international law in what has come to be known
as the Occupied Territories. I could quote from
any number of legal sources to show that
international protocols have been exceeded.
I have just returned from a visit with two
Oireachtas colleagues, Deputy Liz O’Donnell
and Deputy Simon Coveney, at the invitation of
Christian Aid. The experience of witnessing on
the ground the lived reality of the Palestinian
people even for a moment was instructive. We
were the victims of the capricious arrogance of
some of the soldiers and security guards at the
crossings although others among them were
decent, humane and friendly.
One of the points I would make is that forcing
young people into these situations and
encouraging them to treat without respect their
fellow humans is a violation of their moral spirit
and a degradation of everything for which the
state of Israel stood in the past and should
continue to stand for. How easy is the slide into
moral chaos. At the Erez checkpoint on the way
into Gaza, one of the young Israeli soldiers,
otherwise a pleasant lad, remarked: “I don’t
know why you are going in there. It is full of
Arabs.” It was just a casual remark and the true
and awful significance only dawned on me later
upon reflection. I doubt it would ever dawn on
that soldier.
The Gaza Strip is a pathetic little rasher of land
surrounded on three sides by Israel. It is further
subdivided into three by Israeli military
installations at crossing points. These can be used
to isolate each separate area at the discretion of
the occupying forces. There are also 16 Israeli
settlements controlling 14% of the land mass.
Most of the coastal fishermen are so severely
restricted by the Israeli marine authorities that
they cannot fish. There is 62% unemployment,
the average industrial wage is less than 10% of
that of Israel, 80% of the people live beneath the
poverty level while 40% of the children are
undernourished and anaemic. Water resources
for the area are depleted by artesian wells bored
475 Israel-Palestine: 4 February 2004. Motion 476
[Mr. Norris.]
within illegal settlements which export water to
the irrigation projects in the Negev Desert.
In Gaza we witnessed the wholesale
destruction of houses for strategic purposes, the
laying waste of farm lands, bulldozing of
greenhouses and farmers corralled behind electric
fences watching impotently as their crops rotted
on the trees. We managed to get caught in one of
the arbitrary Israeli closures that take place even
within the Palestinian territory while a gun battle
was fought out over our heads. Although
frightening I was glad that we had the
opportunity to experience some of the lived daily
reality of the civilians within the Gaza area.
When we visited a local school, on the
headmistress’s desk there was an array of shell
casings and ash trays full of spent bullets. These
are the everyday playthings of the children in the
school yard The drawings of young children from
six to 18 show the same horrifying vividly caught
images of dismembered bodies, rockets appearing
from the sky blowing the roofs off buildings,
injuring and maiming women and children. Nor
can this be discounted as propaganda. As the
Bible tells us, “Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings shall come forth truth”, and this is what
these children live with. Where will they be in ten
years time if not in Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-
Qaeda or something even worse?
On the coastal strip we met a fisherman and
his wife with eight children living in tiny Sowetolike
cramped conditions, the smell of sewage
heavy even in the primitive kitchen. This is how
people live there. Yet in these awful
circumstances they retain their dignity,
cleanliness and courteous hospitality. One must
be careful not to blame the Israelis entirely for
this because in many cases poor conditions
existed before the Israeli occupation. However, it
was partly as a result of Israeli action that work
on the sewage ponds was halted so that now on
the outskirts of Gaza city people live literally in
their own excrement. Children are affected by
bronchial asthma and upper respiratory tract
infections and this is something for which Israel,
the European Union — which started the project
but lacked the guts to finish it — and the
Palestinian Authority, whose corrupt practices
helped to syphon money away from the project,
all have a responsibility. To all of them it is a
moral reproach. I would like in particular to ask if
the Government during its Presidency of Europe
could not at least do something about the
situation by providing decent sanitary
arrangements or at least stopping the overflow of
raw sewerage.
At Qualqilya, the wall bites deep into the heart
of Palestinian territory to throw a cement noose
complete with hostile machine gun posts and one
functioning exit to surround tens of thousands of
Palestinians. This used to be a positive interface
between Israel and Palestine and there were
many joint enterprise businesses. They are all in
the process of collapse, co-operation being
replaced by antagonism. The go-ahead young
mayor of this important urban region is being
undermined by constant harassment from the
Israeli side, while the extreme elements find the
discontent so caused to be fertile ground for
recruitment.
On this occasion we also visited a small
mountain village called Jayyus. While there we
met a group of farmers. One of the officials told
me that one of these old men of the soil who had
not wept at his son’s funeral had to turn away
as he was describing to an interviewer what was
happening to his farmland — as his eyes filled up
with tears and he was ashamed. Love of the land
is something with which we in Ireland can
empathise.
I promised these people at the least that I
would tell their story through the Irish Parliament
to its people and let it stand upon the record. The
first man, through an interpreter, told me how on
30 November last his nine year old daughter
became seriously ill. He brought her to the gate
so that she could visit a doctor to get treatment.
He talked to the soldiers. They said that orders
were not to open the gate even at the advertised
opening times on that particular day — bear in
mind this is not a border, it is people imprisoned
deep within their own territory. He was told that
the keys were with a roving military vehicle. He
ran over to the car which swerved to avoid him
but which would not stop. He waited for the
authorities. A military car arrived, stopped 20
metres from him and now the girl had a very high
fever. They telephoned the doctors and one
came, but when he wanted to give the girl an
injection through the fence he was prevented, so
he threw over a box of tablets instead. Luckily
she survived.
A second man similarly had a son, four years
old, who was very sick. There were many people
waiting at the gate. Soldiers pushed them back.
He waited 15 minutes, but again was refused
permission to let the car through. Soldiers told
him to carry the child but it was too far. He said,
“The boy will die”. To this the soldiers replied
that they did not care. He then laid the child on
the ground in front of the vehicle and said: “This
is my son. It is your fault if he dies. If he does die
I will kill you.” After an hour and a half they
eventually allowed him to take the child through.
The child luckily survived.
A third farmer told of 43 students going to
school the previous day. It started raining at
about 12 o’clock. The children were kept waiting
in the rain for one and a half hours. The children
even touched the electric fence to try and draw
attention to their plight, but nobody came.
Eventually a guard arrived and after another 20
minutes they were allowed through. This happens
virtually every day when there are instances of
police chasing and firing at Palestinians.
One well established farmer we met in the
previous village took us to the fence so that we
could see his incubators. Some 4,000 chicks died
in one day and 7,000 on another day because they
477 Israel-Palestine: 4 February 2004. Motion 478
are not allowed to visit the plant to see to
essentials such as food, water and heat. Now his
brother lives in a shed on the premises at risk of
his life.
During our brief visit we had a meeting with
some Irish Jewish families who have chosen to
make their life in Israel. The response to our visit
was quite mixed, some being actively hostile. One
of the most interesting guests was not Irish, but
married to a Cork man. She was from Bratislava
originally and carried the terrible tell-tale mark
of a tattoo number from Auschwitz on her wrist.
She told us that when she was sent to Auschwitz
she was selected by the infamous Dr. Mengele
who tapped her with his riding crop, brought her
forward and said to her: “But you are not Jewish.
You are too beautiful with your blond hair and
blue eyes.” She, however, confirmed that she was
Jewish. He then asked her age and she replied,
“13”. With a subdued but powerful emphasis he
said into her ear: “You are not 13, you are 16,
repeat this after me, ‘I am 16 years old’ and if
anybody asks you your age, you say you are 16,”
and she did. This was how she escaped when all
the children under 16 were gassed.
She told me that every time there is a bomb in
Jerusalem she has nightmares. She sees again the
camps, the dogs and the brutal Gestapo officers.
She also said she sympathised with the plight of
the Arabs but, she said, “What are we to do? We
only want to live.”
It is very difficult to respond in the light of such
testimony. As a Christian one can only be
humbled and shamed by what was inflicted upon
such innocent decent people. However, I would
also have to ask: would her nightmares not have
been worse if she had come with us and seen the
wall and the ghetto, for such it is, that has been
created by Jewish people into which they have
put their Semitic cousins, the Palestinians? If she
had seen the concrete watch towers and
automatic machine gun emplacements, the
guards, the uniforms and the dogs, could she have
borne it? I believe this is one of the problems in
Israel, that many decent people cannot confront
what is being done in their name by the Sharon
Government and some of its predecessors
because if they did, their whole moral universe
would collapse.
The Israeli Government collaborates with them
in their blindness. I gave an example the other
day of the wall at Tulkarm which is four storeys
high and of grey concrete from the Israeli side. It
looks like and is felt by most Israeli civilians to
be a noise barrier. With regard to the infamous
wall, few people who have the experience of
driving along its course could accept this primary
function of security. If it was it would be along
the green line, the 1967 border. It reaches
insidiously into Palestinian territory which is
already sprinkled with spots and looks, on the
map, like it had an attack of measles.
Presently under construction, apparently with
the collaboration of firms with connections to
Irish companies such as Cement Roadstone
Holdings, the wall when finished will have a
devastating impact on about 60 towns, villages
and refugee camps. I regard any such
collaboration by Irish companies as infamous,
shameful and indefensible and I call upon
Cement Roadstone to investigate the situation
and take immediate steps to disinfect itself from
such a reprehensible undertaking. I thank the
Leas-Chathaoirleach for his indulgence. I will
complete my contribution at the end of the
debate.



Mr. Norris: I would like to thank the Minister
and the Minister of State and all my colleagues
who took part in what was a very important
debate. I have not changed my position. I
continue to state where I stand, fully in support
of the human rights of ordinary people on both
sides. When the state of Israel violates those
human rights I will speak out and hope I will be
heard. With regard to the business of settlements
and Mr. Sharon, we must be very careful. I
travelled down there with a very reputable Jewish
scholar who has written extensively on this
subject and he predicted Sharon’s actions two
weeks ago saying: “This is exactly what Sharon
will do. It is a bargaining ploy. Be careful.”
7 o’clock
Every settlement is illegal under the United
Nations. Why should one, two, three or four be
allowed? The position is unsustainable and half
the time in these so-called
settlements there is nobody, just
empty buildings. The other matter is
the point raised by Senator Henry — the
demographics. Sharon knows perfectly well there
are elements within the Palestinian side, for
example, who will now say: “Let us give up.
Surrender is the best form of attack. Let us say
we cannot have a state; it does not work. We will
all go in with Israel.” Then Israel is overwhelmed
because it is faced with the problem of whether
it becomes totally dictatorial or whether Israelis
recognise the Palestinians and become a minority
in their own Jewish state. That is the problem
Sharon faces, so we must be careful with him
because of the cosmetic arrangements he makes.




[Mr. Norris.]
We have a powerful weapon in the European
Union, the association agreement with Israel,
which is a trade consensus. That is where it bites
and that is where it will hurt. There are human
rights protocols attached and I believe there is a
strong case for activating them. With regard to
the suicide bombings I am not going to go over
that. I have said what I had to say apart from
this: I know when that woman, a beautiful young
lawyer, killed herself, awful as that deed was it is
not enough just to condemn it. One has to ask
why these abnormal events happen. How is it that
a young woman with a law degree and her life in
front of her commits such an act? We must ask
why, not to excuse it, but to delve into the
reasons. When one asks this question, one
discovers that her brother and her cousin were
shot in front of her and her father, when dying of
cancer, was refused palliative treatment. He was
stopped all the time at the gate. She watched him
die in agony. I am not excusing her act, but
putting it into context.
As a former academic, I believe there should
be a comparative review of sentencing policy in
the jurisdiction of Israel as between Jewish and
Arab citizens. There is a discrepancy and it is a
reproach to the Israeli bar council that it has done
nothing about. I would like to return to the
business of the wall. Some 220,000 people are
affected directly, representing a third of the
population of Palestine. On visiting this region,
both sides have a tendency to ask what lessons we
can show them from our experience in Northern
Ireland. The parallel is salutary — four hundred
years after the plantation of Ulster, we are still
dealing with its malignant consequences. At least
now we have learned and there is progress. One
reason for this is the doctrine of parity of esteem,
which has not been accepted by the contending
parties, especially the Israelis, whose government
appears to have declared war, not on a state, but
on its people and whose proud boast of having
made the desert bloom has now been replaced in
the territories by the horrible reality of turning
orchards and olive groves back into desert.
If one takes the parallel with the North
seriously and tries to imagine the Israeli-
Palestinian situation and its conditions being reenacted
north of the Border, this would involve
the bombing of the Divis Flats by F-16 aircraft
every time a machine gun poked out of a window,
the surrounding of Dundalk by a concrete noose
and its isolation from the rest of the Republic,
with all the attendant restrictions on its
population and the demolition of half of west
Belfast because of supposed IRA contact. It
would be much better if, instead of attempting
to degrade the Palestinian population further, the
Israeli Government made every attempt to bring
them up to the level of infrastructure, income and
employment that used to be enjoyed before the
intifada in the state of Israel.
Mr. Sharon frequently says the problem with
the process is there is no partner. This tends to
refer to Mr. Arafat. However, the absence of
partnership could equally be laid at his door. On
any occasion when there was a possibility of
peace breaking out, Mr. Sharon was careful to
sabotage it by a target assassination which
frequently went wrong and caused multiple
civilian casualties. After the recent suicide
bombing, which was widely and rightly
condemned, an Israeli Government spokesman,
Mr. Gissin said: “The rest of the world should
now sit back and let us do as we need to do to
defend ourselves.”
I sincerely hope this advice is not heeded and
is smartly rejected. There could be no better
recipe for disaster. Let us recall what happened
when Mr. Sharon infamously stood back and let
the Christian militia in to butcher the unfortunate
Palestinians in Sabra and Chatila. It is wise, also,
to be careful of repeated and quite dishonest calls
made by Mr. Sharon on the Palestinian Authority
to disarm Hamas. Let us recall that Hamas was
established with the assistance of covert Israeli
funding as an early means of destabilising the
Palestinian Liberation Organisation. In so doing,
they sowed dragons teeth. Is it reasonable to
expect a police force whose police stations have
been repeatedly bombed and whose personnel
are forbidden by the Israeli occupiers to carry
weapons or even wear uniforms in directing
traffic to confront armed radical elements? As I
said on RTE recently, it is like expecting them to
go out in their underpants and peg snowballs at
heavily armed fanatics.
If there is to be a resolution of this terrible
conflict in the medium term, positive steps,
however small, as the Minister of State said, need
to be initiated now. During the week, I attended
a talk by the Cypriot Foreign Minister in the
Institute of European Affairs. Speaking on the
Cyprus problem, he said that in order to make
progress both sides must cut their losses, turn the
page and develop a new vocabulary. This is the
best advice I could give to both sides in the
continuing tragic dispute in Palestine-Israel.
Finally, I thank Christian Aid for making this
trip possible and to say that if I learned anything
it is the necessity for people of conscience, be
they Israeli, Palestinian, Arab or Irish to travel
through these hot spots and bear witness to what
is happening so that the worst excesses may be
stopped. I also ask in particular that the Minister
for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Cowen, and the
Minister of State at the Department of Foreign
Affairs, Deputy Kitt, keep this matter close to the
top of the agenda during the Irish Presidency and
make a point of visiting not just Jerusalem but
also Ramallah, the terrible trajectory of the wall
509 Public 4 February 2004. Transport 510
and the squalid militarised conditions that now
exist in the West Bank and Gaza.
Question put and agreed to.
An Cathaoirleach: When is it proposed to sit
again?
Ms O’Rourke: At 10.30 a.m. tomorrow.