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Seanad Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 15 May 1984

Vol. 103 No. 12

Visit of President of the United States: Motion.

I move:

That, to welcome the visit to Ireland of Ronald Reagan, the President of the United States of America, and to mark the event in a signal manner, a joint sitting of both Houses of the Oireachtas be held on Monday, 4th June, 1984, in the Dáil Chamber and that the President of the United States of America be invited to address such joint sitting; that for the purposes of such joint sitting the Chairman shall be the Ceann Comhairle; that the proceedings at such joint sitting shall consist of a speech by the Ceann Comhairle welcoming the President, the address by the President and a speech of thanks by the Cathaoirleach of the Seanad for the address; and that the time for such joint sitting shall be 12 noon.

In 1963 when a similar motion was before Seanad Éireann the discussion and passing of that motion was a formality and no opposition was expressed. It would, I think, be somewhat ridiculous if I were to follow that precedent and ignore the fact that opposition has been expressed by a number of people, including Members of this House, to the visit and to the proposed joint sitting. Accordingly, something needs to be said in the proposing of this motion.

The first thing I want to say is that a special relationship has existed between Ireland and the United States of America that spans more than two centuries, a special relationship that transcends the personalities and the policies of whoever happens to be the Taoiseach of this country or to be the President of the United States of America at any particular time. It is on that basis that this motion is being moved as a similar motion was moved in 1963.

I think we must examine the nature of this proposed visit. In opposition to this visit two main arguments have been put forward. It has been charged that President Reagan showed no interest in Ireland until he decided to seek re-election to the Presidency and that he then sought to insert this particular nugget into his election campaign. This is simply not true. President Reagan has shown more interest in this country than any of his predecessors during my time in politics. I am talking about interest in the things that concern us in our national policy and in regard to the courtesy and honour which he has done our Heads of Government. President Reagan visited the Irish Embassy on St. Patrick's Day for a luncheon engagement on two occasions. This was an unprecedented action for a President in office. President Reagan invited the Taoiseach of the day to visit the United States in three successive years, which again is something which was unprecedented. President Reagan has shown greater interest in the question of US investment in Ireland and in the search for a lasting solution in Northern Ireland than his immediate predecessors. In my view this visit cannot be seen as something that emerged only since his decision to seek re-election. His interest in coming here to a country which he had visited previously in a private capacity and which he now intends to visit while in office is not out of the pattern of his previous attitudes.

The other main point that has been made in regard to this visit is concern about American policy particularly in regard to Central America and to the armaments race. My personal views and the views of the Government are clearly on the record in regard to these two issues. I have no hesitation in saying once again in this debate that I would like to see changes in US policies in both these areas but this does not prevent me supporting the proposition that the head of State of the United States of America should be received by our Houses of the Oireachtas with courtesy and with honour. It is for those reasons that I propose the motion which stands in my name and in the name of Senator Michael Ferris.

On behalf of Fianna Fáil, I wish to support this motion.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Is there a seconder for the motion?

I formally second it but reserve the right to speak.

I apologise to Senator Ferris. As has been said by Senator Dooge, President Reagan is coming here at the invitation of the Irish Government. For the reasons the Senator has stated as well as for many other reasons, he should be accorded a cordial welcome to this House and to this country. When I say this House, I believe he will be visiting this House but that he will be addressing a joint meeting of the two Houses of the Parliament.

I suppose it is overdue that an American President should come here again and address us. It was 1963 when it happened before. In the States we were afforded the great courtesy and honour of having three Leaders of our State accorded the opportunity to address the joint Houses of the United States Assemblies. We have many and long-lasting friendships at Government level, personal level and economic level with the United States of America. I doubt if there is one person in this House who does not have a relative in the States and I equally doubt if there is anyone in this House who does not have a friend there. The United States must be thankful for the number of Irish people who, unfortunately, had to go out there but who played a major part in the building up of the United States. The cordiality afforded to anybody from Ireland visiting the United States should not be forgotten.

We should not forget that there are differences of opinion regarding the foreign policies of President Reagan's administration. I join with Senator Dooge in suggesting that American Government policy in Central America and their attitude towards the armament race should be taken into accout. We must not forget that on numerous occasions we have had to criticise the United States for their attitude towards the Middle East. That is apart from this visit which is at the invitation of the Government. The opportunity will be afforded to the people to let the President know their attitude towards his foreign policy. As a nation which has remained neutral and which has done much to maintain peace in the world, he will have to listen to what we have to say. If he does not, he is not fit to hold the office he has.

I can see the reasons why many people wish to protest about the visit. In a democratic society I do not think anyone would wish to stop people protesting. There are two issues involved. We have the issue of the invitation to a head of a country with which we have enormous ties to address the two Houses. That is a matter of courtesy. It has been said by people who oppose the visit that we are putting economics first and forgetting our moral obligations to the people of the Middle East, Central America and other places which may be affected by the armament race in the future. That is not true. I can criticise President Reagan's attitude towards the Middle East and still afford him — I know my party will join me — the courtesy which is his due as the leader of one of the countries with which we have the most friendly relations. It has been said that this may be an election gimmick. I am not politically naive enough to think that it will not play a part in the election campaign nor do I think that President Reagan is, but if one goes to Gaelic Park on a Sunday before any election in New York one would see Mario Biaggi and Mayor Koch suddenly turning into Irishmen. I do not see anything wrong with that for the day. It gives an Irish dimension to American politics. We support the motion. On behalf of my party, I would say céad míle fáilte to President Reagan to this House when he comes.

Before making my contribution on the motion, it is important that I should, as a member of the Labour Party, state exactly the Labour Party position in connection with President Reagan's visit and our attitude to his foreign policy. I do so with a certain amount of pride in the fact that it is not today, yesterday or last year that we have shown an interest in the underprivileged part of the world and those who have suffered from tyrannical intervention by other states. This has been ably shown by our International Affairs Committee in their deliberations and their papers on these areas for a long number of years. These have been expressed eloquently by the chairman of our party, Senator Michael Higgins who will contribute to this debate later. This area was visited by Senators Higgins and O'Mahony representing the European Parliament.

In our contacts through the International Affairs Committee and the International Socialist Party we have been consistent in our attitude towards the problems in developing nations which have been interfered with by America, Russia or any other great power who have used their influence, military or otherwise, to impose their will.

I should like to refer to the fact that the administrative council of my party, conscious of the fact that a visit from President Reagan was imminent, stated their position quite clearly and submitted a resolution to the annual conference of our party, which took place recently. It is appropriate that it be put on the record of this House so that there will be no ambiguity regarding our party's stand on the policies being pursued by the present occupant of the Presidency of the United States. The resolution from the administrative council reads as follows:

Conference, in connection with the forthcoming visit of President Reagan, reaffirms that Labour is opposed to the policies of the present US Administration in Central America and supports those forces in the region struggling for freedom and dignity against US backed oppression; is opposed to US support for the brutal Marcos regime in the Philippines; is opposed to US policies in the field of nuclear weapons deployment, and welcomes the decision of the Party Leader to seek a direct meeting with President Reagan in order to express the Party's opposition to current US foreign policy.

That was the stated position of the outgoing administrative council going to conference. It allowed other people at the conference to table resolutions contrary to that and expressing other and stronger views. It would be appropriate also to refer to a composite resolution, which encompassed quite a lot of different resolutions about President Reagan's visit, to which there was an amendment carried at Conference. I will put that on the record of the House to ensure that our party's position is well known in this area and what members of our party can and will do during this visit. The composite resolution, which was amended, reads as follows:

Conference, deploring the support by President Ronald Reagan and the Government of the United States of America of the brutal regimes in EI Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Chile and the Philippines, the murderous interventions by the United States in Central and Latin America, the attempts to de-stabilise Nicaragua and the senseless build up of nuclear armaments in Europe directs the incoming Administrative Council to initiate a campaign of peaceful demonstrations against the visit of President Reagan to this country and the Tánaiste to represent the Party's opposition to American foreign policy by presenting the petition which has been signed by delegates to this Annual Conference.

It states:

We the delegates, attending Annual Conference, strongly oppose the American policy of supporting right wing dictatorships in Central and South America and the Philippines. The record of human rights violations perpetrated by these regimes is despicable. We call on the Party Leader to take this petition and present it to President Reagan during his visit to Ireland.

That was the amended composite resolution that was adopted by Conference. It would be inconsistent of me, as Deputy Leader of this House and as one who would like to carry out the wishes of my party, if I did not welcome the opportunity for the Tánaiste to express our concern to the President. That opportunity will arise if the motion before the House is adopted.

I respect and will uphold the democratic and legitimate right of people and indeed all members of our party, to involve themselves in peaceful protests. Those in our party and other parties who differ about how this should be done should also respect the rights of others to give a courteous reception to a person holding such a high office. I say that in all sincerity and not just because I am a Tipperary man where this man claims to have forebears going back many centuries. We would normally be extremely proud that a descendant of somebody who emigrated from my native county so long ago could achieve the high office that he has achieved. I am deeply sorry that since his election he has pursued policies that nobody in this House or country will condone or uphold.

Those who want to protest will respect the right of those of us who have different views to have dialogue with the President. We in the Labour Party have often called for dialogue between many disputing nations. As we aspire to a positive neutrality, we respect the fact that dialogue is important especially between warring nations so that there may be satisfactory and peaceful relations. We have called for dialogue between East and West and we worry when that dialogue is at risk as it is today. We have called for the divided communities in the North of this country to have dialogue although they disagree with one another fundamentally and as a result there is loss of life. We have called for a dialogue between ourselves and Great Britain and between ourselves and our separated brethern in the North of Ireland. We have called for dialogue between employers and employees. In other words, if we are Labour and socialists automatically we are pacifists by nature. To give an opportunity to our party leader to express our strongest possible reservations is in accordance with our party policy. He is the President, elected by the great American people with whom we have affinity and close contact which we would like to strengthen and prosper in the future. Any protest that takes place should not be seen as a protest against the American people. It is against the man who holds that high office, which we respect so much, that our accusations are directed. We can, of course, accuse him of using this visit as part of his election campaign. Senator Lanigan summed it up when he said it would be naive to suggest that it is otherwise. We all aspire to re-election at some stage. We all like to do things during an election campaign that people might consider would be of benefit to us but we should not allow ourselves to be used as part of an election campaign to re-elect somebody with whose policies we fundamentally disagree. We should resent it if we are used in that fashion. That is why I welcome a strong peaceful protest. If it is done in a proper way, it will do good in ensuring that he is not re-elected. If he is not re-elected, America and the deprived parts of the world that we are concerned about will be better places to live in. We must not allow ourselves to be used by the President or indeed by other people who might have ulterior motives which we are unaware of. My party have no ulterior motives. We just want to express our common and well held reservations about his policies.

We must respect freedom, and that includes the right of President Reagan to address the Houses of the Oireachtas. Acknowledging the freedom of the President's right to address us cements our right to express our condemnation of his policies. That is a useful and democratic way to ensure that the President's visit can be used to some benefit for the people about whom we have expressed concern.

Other great leaders have met the President, particularly the Pope, who met him quite recently. The Pope is accepted by all of us as one of the major peacemakers throughout the world. I am sure he expressed his own reservations about some of the disastrous policies that have been adopted, under which the Church has suffered, to the President. I am sure the Pope did that in a legitimate way and I hope we will do likewise.

Any party leader or Head of State who visits this country should be afforded the countesy of meeting and speaking to us and listening to our reservations. We adopted this attitude when President Castro visited this country by way of a flying visit through Shannon. He was met officially by the Government, which was appropriate. The voices that are raised now against President Reagan were strangely quiet when President Castro visited us, even if for a fleeting moment to have an Irish coffee in Shannon. It is appropriate that world leaders and Heads of State, particularly those who are democratically elected — whatever we might say about his re-election we must except the fact that he was democratically elected — should be met by the Government. There are many leaders he supports who are not democratically elected. There are military juntas and all kinds of administrations about which we have reservations. I am surprised at a democrat like President Reagan associating himself with people like President Marcos. It is a welcome breath of fresh air to see the result of the elections in the Philippines and the fact that, in spite of all kinds of intimidation at the ballot boxes, the people in that country have been somehow able to express their reservations about their present leader. People all over the world are now conscious of what the real rights to freedom are, and we as an nation should uphold and defend that right. Allowing President Reagan to address us is part of that right and freedom. It affords us an opportunity to present him formally with a petition which expresses our strongest reservations. For that reason my name is appended as seconder to the resolution.

It has been put to us this evening that the visit of President Reagan to this country and the proposed address to the Houses of the Oireachtas is the visit of a Head of State which has been friendly to Ireland over the years and that as such we should welcome, if not the man, at least the office. Normally I would agree with the point of view that if a Head of State visits this country we should extend a welcome to him, although not necessarily a welcome which extends to addressing the Houses of the Oireachtas. I have considered my position very seriously before I withdraw from extending a welcome to the Houses of the Oireachtas to President Reagan and before I oppose the Houses of the Oireachtas offering him this kind of welcome. I have given this very serious consideration because, normally, a Head of State should be welcomed.

I would like to give the reasons why I feel this way about it, why I am taking this attitude and why I will not be present when President Reagan addresses the Houses. Firstly, several speakers have already stated the basic reasons why we have objected to President Reagan's policies. These are, basically, his policies on the nuclear issue and his policies in Central America, the Philippines, South America and so on. In saying this, I am not for one instant accepting that the policies of the Soviets are totally virtuous in these areas, or that they are not trying to stir up trouble in these areas. I am not saying that Cuba is without fault in this area either, but we are not here discussing whether the Head of the Soviets or Castro is to address the Houses of the Oireachtas. With respect to Senator Ferris, to send someone to meet President Castro while he takes an Irish coffee in Shannon is a very different quality of welcome from actually asking him or anyone to address the Houses of the Oireachtas. Nevertheless, the fact that the Soviets' policies and the Cubans' policies in these areas may also be aimed at international difficulty and international wrong, does not mean that two wrongs makes a right.

As a country, we must give attention to the fact that precisely during President Reagan's presidency the nuclear danger to the whole world has vastly increased and nuclear madness has undoubtedly taken an increasing hold on both sides, and he is not without blame in this. In addition, the Reagan Administration's policies — and it is the Reagan Administration's policies, not just the policy of the United States Government, above which Reagan stands — in Central America have been marked by a constant support of military dictatorship, of men whose hands are bloody with murder and torture. We know this very well, not from some propaganda put about by eastern countries, not from things written in wild press accounts, but from accounts given by our own missionaries and development workers who returned from these countries and from people like Bishop Casey and those who work with Trócaire, who have gone and seen what is happening and who have come back to tell us about the real reign of terror that is going on.

Ireland is not alone in feeling this. On Sunday last there appeared a leading article in The Observer in Britain which drew considerable attention to President Reagan's present stance, not just what he has done in the past. This article stated:

Last week the United States took two bold new steps down the road to another Vietnam. On Wednesday evening President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech of breathtaking disingenuousness.

It referred to his lauding the right wing insurgents in Nicaragua and blackguarding the Sandinista Government they are attempting to overthrow. It also referred to his actions in EI Salvador and to his cold war preoccupations. They acknowledge as I do myself, the part the Russians are playing in this area. It went on to say:

To say that is not to absolve the Kremlim from the charge of fishing in the troubled waters of Central America or to pretend that the Cubans do not want to implant their own unattractive brands of triumphalistic militarism and Leninist cult of personality in Central America. The Russians and the Cubans are out to aggravate Washington to the best of their abilities in the isthmus.

Nevertheless, they go on to say that President Reagan's policies have caused him to wage an undeclared war against Nicaragua in defiance of all the norms of international behaviour as the International Court of Justice made plain in its judgments last week:

They have persuaded him to militarise the rural and comparatively peaceful society of Honduras and to press the Costa Ricans to go back on the admirable decision they took in 1949 to abolish their army. They have got him into a position in which he actually condones a vicious military regime in Guatemala.

This leader goes on to say — and this is something which I feel is addressed to us as well as other Europeans:

It behoves President Reagan's European allies to seize the opportunity of his visit next month to put to him forcefully the objections which they have been mouthing quietly and ineffectually over the past few months.

and to dissociate themselves basically from these policies in precisely the way that the Americans dissociated themselves from the madness of the policies of France and Britain at the time of Suez.

It is all very well to say, as Senator Ferris said, that we can attack his policies and still welcome him to the Houses of the Oireachtas. I appreciate that Senator Ferris is in a very difficult position here, but I suggest that he is trying to maintain a position which is deeply and fundamentally self-contradictory. How can we condemn these policies to such an extent and at the same time extend a welcome to the man whose policies they are? What is being said to us is that despite all this we should welcome President Reagan as Head of State of the United States and as representing the people of the United States, and not as the man with particular policies.

I cannot seriously agree with this sort of approach. One of the main reasons is that there is a distinctive difference between our system of a Head of State and a Government and the American system of a Head of State and a Government. In our case President Hillery is the titular Head of State. He is not part of any Government. He is not directly responsible for any Government policy. He can be looked on as representing the Irish people in a dignified and impartial manner. When he goes abroad he can be welcomed as representing the Irish people, and not as being particularly responsible for the policies of whichever government happen to be in power in Ireland at the time. The same thing would apply with the German President, whom President Hillery is at present visiting. He is not a motive force behind the Government policies. In the United Kingdom, it is perfectly obvious that Queen Elizabeth could, in many circumstances, be welcomed as a titular Head of State in different countries which might very deeply indeed disagree with the policies being followed by Mrs. Thatcher. If we put it in this context we can understand it very well. There are many, many people throughout the world who would be perfectly prepared to give a warm and enthusiastic welcome to the Queen of England, but who would be extremely averse to giving such a welcome to Mrs. Thatcher.

In the United States the position is not the same. President Reagan has his own Administration. He has executive power. It is his Government and his policies that are being followed. He is not someone who is above the American Government policies: he is the fount of the American Government policies, the perpetrator of the American Government policies and the person who causes them to be carried out. He is the person who gets up and makes these speeches, these disingenuous and, if I may say so, lying speeches about what is going on in Central America. He is not a figure of ceremony and someone who unites his whole country behind him. He has very, very considerable opposition to these policies within his own people. It is he who is trying to justify his own actions.

When we say we are welcoming him here — or are we welcoming him here? — we must say that we are reacting to the man and to his policies, not just to the man as Head of State and leaving the policies on one side as something to be dealt with as a kind of carefully isolated, insulated thing in a frozen compartment that is different from the rest of Reagan. His policies are part of the man, part of the politician, part of the Head of the State. Personally, I must register my abhorrence of these policies and as a Member of this House I cannot seriously welcome him to the Oireachtas. I feel that such a protest should be quiet and dignified and obviously I have no intention of taking part in any violent or raucous protest in the streets or elsewhere but I cannot and will not be present for his address to these Houses.

There have been a number of objections raised to anyone protesting against Reagan's visit and I would like to deal with one or two of them at least. First, the objection is raised that it will affect American investment in this country if we show any signs of disapproval of President Reagan or his policies, or if we do not welcome him sufficiently. I find it very difficult to believe that it will have any such appreciable effect. Why do American industrialists invest here? It is not because of the foreign policy of the United States, but because they hope by doing so to get a good deal, to get efficient workers and to make substantial profits. They do it because it is good for their business, not because of our agreement or disagreement with the American Government policy. I feel that this is basically irrelevant. Secondly, it is stated that it will affect our tourism industry if we show any signs of objection to Reagan's policy.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I do not like to interrupt you, but you will have to refer to him as President Reagan.

I beg your pardon. This situation may have some effect on tourism, but again we must remember that there are other tourists who might come because we objected to some of President Reagan's policies. In any case, are we really prepared to sell out what we believe in in return for a passing improvement to the tourist trade? In other words, are we going to sell our birthright for a mess of pottage like Esau, or perhaps a mess of St. Patrick's Day lunches, which were referred to by Senator Dooge? In my opinion, this is a question of conscience. In the past few days, I was asked by a supporter of one of the major political parties — I will not say which — why should this country be the conscience of the world? We are a small country, why should we bother with this? Why do we not look out for ourselves and our own gains? To that I would answer that if the small nations are not the conscience of the world, who will be? We can be very sure that the major powers will not be.

I would also refer to our history in foreign policy and in foreign affairs since the foundation of the State, to the role played by Mr. de Valera in the League of Nations and in foreign policy generally, to his role at the time of the Spanish Civil War, to the role of Mr. Aiken in the United Nations and other Ministers for External Affairs and Ministers for Foreign Affairs in our international situations, to, on a more private level, the role of our missionaries and our development workers throughout the world. In all these cases, we have endeavoured to stand for policies of peace and justice, to stand against oppression which we know only too well from our own history. I would ask, why should we forget this role now?

I leave aside discussion of the nature of the proposed visit, whether it is electioneering or not. I think it is fairly obvious that President Reagan hopes it will do him good in his election, but I do not think this is a particularly important side of the matter. Talk of our relatives and friends in the United States, who were mentioned by Senator Lanigan, is also quite irrelevant. Of course, we all have relatives and friends in the United States; some of them would be in favour of President Reagan's policies but quite a number of them would also be against them. There are very many people in the United States who hate and despise President Reagan's policies. Are we, in welcoming him, to reject their views as well?

I listened to what Senator Ferris said about the Pope's attitude. I naturally hesitate to disagree with the Pope's political views, or to suggest that he did not say anything to President Reagan about his present policies, but I would point out that in his visits to South and Central America the Pope was not particularly supportive of those priests and other Christian workers who felt that action has to be taken against dictatorships and against oppressive rulers. I would be somewhat hesitant in simply accepting the lead of the Pope in this particular matter. It is for us to make up our own minds about what we want to do.

I would end simply by expressing the feeling that to ask a visiting Head of State to address the Houses of the Oireachtas is a very particular and different style of welcome from the usual ceremonial visit. It is not very often done. It is important that we should be extremely selective in whom we ask to accept this peculiar and signal honour. I would suggest that there is a very grave difference between the late President Kennedy and President Reagan in being the sort of person whom we should ask to address these Houses and, after consideration of all the factors involved, I must oppose the invitation.

I want in the first instance to clarify the position of the Labour Party as adopted by their annual conference, and in that respect I am grateful to my colleague, Senator Ferris, for drawing attention to the precise wording of the motions that were carried by the conference in Dublin on 15 April. The position that the Labour party are in — and let there be no doubt whatsoever about it — is that they are opposed to President Reagan's foreign policy, but it is equally certain that it was agreed unanimously by the Labour Party Conference that every unit of the party should organise and initiate peaceful protests against President Reagan's visit here. Such a decision has already been communicated to every branch and every unit of the Labour Party in accordance with the democratic procedures of our party. The party, of course, defeated narrowly — I say narrowly — a suggestion that every member of the Labour Party elected in one capacity or another, should boycott the official ceremonies associated with the Presidential visit. I accept that decision, that we did not bind our public representatives in that way, but I emphasise the two other elements — that we want to protest that foreign policy, and that we were instructed to organise and initiate peacful protests on the basis of that foreign policy.

I want to develop for a few minutes the thinking that somebody like myself holds in opposing the extension of this extraordinary honour to President Ronald Reagan to address both Houses of the Oireachtas. Firstly, it is important to bear in mind and indeed as Senator McGuinness so correctly points out, that it is a unique honour, it is a signal honour and it is that for a number of reasons. It involves all the Irish people, through their elected representatives, with the visit of the individual involved. We must reflect on the significance of this. The decision to so invite President Ronald Reagan is a compliment rarely bestowed by other countries. You can reply to that by saying "We will ask any Head of State who visits this country to address both Houses." I presume those people who favour this motion are not suggesting such things. You can then reply that this is something that is being reciprocated because our Taoiseach has been invited to address the Houses in the United States. Then your argument is based on reciprocity.

While I have many differences with him in the matter of economic and overall social philosophy, which I happen to think is one I would not quite favour in many ways, I refuse to believe that Deputy Garret FitzGerald, the Taoiseach, is of the same order and represents the same attitude towards the world as President Reagan. We are left with the idea that it is something we should do, get it over with and let it pass away as quickly as possible. In the end you find the people who argue from the logic of this motion suggesting something similar to that. I want to respect their viewpoint in doing so. They argue, I think I am accurate in saying this and this is the strong point of their argument, that one is honouring the Head of State and that the State has a unique long tradition with the Irish people. I want to question that. Between 1845 and 1849 one million Irish people died, and another million people emigrated, many of them to the United States, via ports such as Liverpool. They found themselves in the United States where their position was broadly similar to those people who today live in insecurity in the countries that are attacked by President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy. They were not wealthy yet; they were not tourists; they were involuntary, refugees from economic circumstances that had been forced on them and they fled this country.

In all the generations that lived in the United States, very few of them ever cast a vote for the party that put forward President Ronald Reagan as their candidate. They voted for the Democrats. They found themselves in the cities of the United States, and they did not support the Republican Party with its views, particularly if you look at the history of support for both parties within the United States. I find it a little incredible to suggest that President Ronald Reagan is coming here representing all the American people, not only now but all those people who are descended from those people who were driven by hunger and misfortune from this country. I want most emphatically to say that the facts do not support such a suggestion. It is equally important to bear in mind, in view of what other people have said, that the number — to quote the polls — who put him in the White House with the appalling consequences it has wreaked on the world, was 27 per cent. I had the opportunity of making contact during the second week in April with many of the people who represent Democratic public opinion, and some Republican people, in New York and Washington. Their view was that it would be both valuable and necessary that President Reagan be made very well aware of the strength of popular public feeling in this country about his foreign policy. They emphasised that — and I am speaking about people long in office, such as the Speaker, Tip O'Neill, and people who had direct conversations with Senator Ted Kennedy and so forth.

I emphasise a point made by Senator McGuinness, that is, that the onus is on those who want to support this motion to establish clearly and unequivocally how they are going to distance the man from the office. I am not accusing anyone of having spoken of that. I think such would be an exercise in casuistry worthy of medieval theology. The fact is that the man comes here, as Senator McGuinness points out perceptively and accurately, not as a titular Head of State but as a Head of State administering a policy that has precise effects of which we know. We cannot, unfortunately for those who believe in a view of Ireland, keep our heads down and not know what is happening around the world.

Television screens have brought into the sittingrooms of every family in this island the horror of Central America, the horror of the Philippines, the horror of the refugee camps, the horror of massacre and the horror of those who die in the streets in El Salvador. We cannot, like those people in Germany at the beginning of the Second World War, say we did not know. We do know, we more than know the consequences of President Ronald Reagan's foreign policy: we know the author of those policies. This motion proposes to bring the author of all those actions of which we have full knowledge into this building and not address one of us, but address all of us, assembled in a solemn session to pay tribute to his visit. I reject that as a moral course of action, with the greatest of respect. I think the morality of our response to the foreign policy consequences — and I say this with humility — should take precedence over the formalism of how we handle the visits by Heads of State in one way or another. We are going to confer on the visit of President Ronald Reagan the formal compliment that he be invited to address both of these Houses, and through that we are going to involve all the Irish people through those of us who are elected representatives. Let me say obiter dicta on this: those constituents I represent in this House who have expressed their opinion to me have told me overwhelmingly that they do not want me, in their name, to lend myself to such a visit, and of course I will not be doing so.

There is another point that I am glad has been conceded round the House, and most recently in public discussion, and that is, the connection between the visit of President Ronald Reagan and his re-election campaign. Nobody except the most naive people are suggesting that it has nothing to do with his re-election campaign. Rather coyly, many of our own politicians suggest that if they were being re-elected they would find themselves in strange places hoping to win votes. This is an honest admission, but I must construe it in another way. We are not only bringing President Ronald Reagan running for re-election into these Houses in the full glare of his Republican television camera network, but we are assisting his re-election process, quite consciously. If we are assisting his re-election process, we are assisting his Administration and the continuation of the policies that are at the core of that Administration.

I do not have the time this evening to go in detail through President Ronald Reagan's policies at home and abroad. They have a very definite character in the United States. I have heard people in Europe, for example, look at a distance and talk of the strong American dollar recovery happening in the United States, and one innocent person writing a letter to the papers the other day said, "what better reasons for giving anybody an honorary degree?" Of course if you were in the United States and were looking at the parks that are no longer open for five days a week, if you were looking at the cuts in health services, the numbers cut back in public service employment, you would see very clearly that his policies have had a disastrous effect on poorer people, black, white, yellow and brown in the United States. That is why there is such a strength for candidate Jesse Jackson in the poorer parts of the United States, particularly among the non-white population. His attitude on how trade unions should exercise their rights is disgraceful. There are his policies abroad to which attention has been drawn.

Perhaps someone, somewhere, in the middle of all these formal visits, will say something to him about the Irish citizen who is locked in a jail in the Philippines under the Marcos régime, with the assistance of the United States. We are all aware that President Reagan's influence could have him released in a day.

Then there is the tragedy of Central America with which we are familiar. I regard it as part of the evolution of Irish thinking that in 1981 and 1982 a consensus was established across all the parties opposing military solutions in Central America, calling for support for a political process that included the Contadora countries' proposals for peace in the region. I will turn in a moment to that, but it is very clear that the present Reagan Administration is not committed to the Contadora process, and cannot between addressing us here and getting the freedom of Galway city, an honorary degree and a reception in Dublin Castle be converted to supporting the Contadora process.

Anyone who suggests that quiet diplomatic conversions can take place must have a belief that extends way beyond the miracle of the striking down of Saul. I have been influenced particularly in my attitude to the question suggested in this resolution by the structure of the Reagan Administration's foreign policy. I wish to give some instances. I hope I am not boring anyone but I am reminding people of the black news of our television screens. We have a moral weakness to switch off the facts of death as Senator Robb often points out when he is speaking about deaths in Northern Ireland but we have watched, assisted in particular by the people the previous speaker mentioned, reports of the 50,000 people who have died in El Salvador alone since 1979.

We have watched the reports of the people who have placed mines in the waters of Nicaragua. It is time to call spades spades about the position in relation to Nicaragua and the impact of the Reagan administration's policies there. At the same time as the Reagan visit will be taking place in Ireland and as he will be addressing both of these Houses, the Christian Democratic Party of Belgium, for example, are turning out material which seeks to discredit the Sandanista regime in Nicaragua. I am referring to the English version of their document circulated between 9 and 19 March 1984 which is an elaborate tissue of lies purporting to come from a standing committee for human rights in Nicaragua. This same bogus organisation are the organisation who published photographs of people killed in the last days of the Somozist regime purporting to be Miskito Indians slaughtered by the Sandanista, the same discredited organisation, the standing committee for human rights with its links with Cosa, the high council for private enterprise in Nicaragua. Again I have listened to people suggesting that the Nicaraguan hierarchy disapprove of the Government there and that maybe the Americans are right.

The Nicaraguan Hierarchy of six bishops, one of whom has always supported the present Government and one more who has recently started to support the Government, is presided over by Archbishop Obando y Bravo, who in the Somoza regime, in the last days of the last cruel dictator, ordered the churches kept open on a continuous basis so that people could pray for the recovery of Somoza, who when the Government overthrew a dictatorship, one of the cruellist in modern times, left Nicaragua for Costa Rica, later returned and now presides over the Hierarchy. It is an indication of life in Nicaragua that his speeches are printed every Monday morning in the newspaper La Princa.

I am not going to stand up here and say it is a matter of who is influencing what and who is influencing the rest of the region. I want to repeat something I said when I was a Member of the other House. The people who support foreign policy initiatives of the present Reagan administration are visiting death on the people of El Salvador. They are seeking to destabilise the country that is Nicaragua and in which the most significant achievements have been made and which are not denied. There has been a reduction from 50 per cent to 12 per cent in the illiteracy rate. There have been more houses built in the last four years than in the previous 50 years. In relation to access to education the rural people have gone back to participate in schools. That country has had 400-500 mines placed in its different ports by the direct assistance of the Reagan Administration.

There is no point in saying that, of course, we condemn all of this but that we are going to ignore who the author of it is. I am not asking the Seanad to take my word for all of this. I refer to the provisional verbatim record of the Security Council meeting of 30 March, 1984 at which Mr. Chamorro Mora and Mrs. Kirkpatrick were present. The Document is No. S/PV. 2525. On that occasion the ambassadors of the United Nations gave details of the camps that are placed in Honduras territory across the border for the purpose of attempting to destabilise Nicaragua. Fifteen camps are listed on pages 17 and 18 of the minutes of the Security Council, ranging from the "Las Tunas" camp, 11 kilometres west of El Espino in Honduran territory, and which has 200 counter revolutionaries. These 15 camps were listed in their locations and details given as to who worked within them and who was being assisted within them. Mrs. Kirkpatrick did not choose to deny a single fact in her later reply.

Equally, for the period between 4 February and 29 March 1984 the Nicaraguan Ambassador to the United Nations listed 33 separate attempts which were made in that period to attack hydro electric stations, fishing boats and so on in Nicaragua. I am giving these details because I was anxious to give a source that had nothing to do with some distorted television programme or anything of that kind. These are facts. They have not been contradicted.

People genuinely believe, by passing resolutions like this that they are for some reason or other paying tribute to the people who helped the Irish emigrants in the nineteenth century. How do facts like that fit with our own historical experience? When we were in this position ourselves, when we were under siege and had economic policies heaped against them, would we have thanked them for saying, "excuse us while we forget you for a while, while we get on with the business of entertaining, conferring degrees and freedom, and while we all stand up and applaud the author of the misery of these people?" I find it morally impossible to square that kind of thinking. I believe that if you try to make those distinctions you will provoke a crisis between political institutional debate and representation and the feelings of people on issues like this.

People who are in favour of giving the maximum amount of honours to the visit of President Ronald Reagan all argue that these matters I speak of are areas of diplomatic activity, that diplomatic initiative could be taken on them and that we could get on with the business of operating by other considerations. I am very worried about what that tells us about foreign policy. The Leader of the Seanad contributed enormously to the development of our foreign policy, to its being far more important to the Irish people now than it was before. Both young and old are debating neutrality, for example. Fine idealistic young people are campaigning for the removal of the threat of nuclear disaster. They deserve all of our respect. The argument that all the matters I speak of can be handled diplomatically is very strange when one is speaking about an administration that has removed itself from the concern of the International Court of Justice, that decided before leaving the Court of Justice at the Hague to attack UNESCO and give it a death blow. That is the administration of which we are speaking.

We should not fool ourselves on these issues. Two groups of people will thank us for protesting peacefully but effectively, for distancing ourselves, if this is what it is at the end of the day, from the re-election campaign. The many people in the United States who do not support the policies of the present administration, with its enormous build up of the threat of war, with its declaration of war effectively on its neighbour, will thank us, as will all the fine people in this country who want us to stand with dignity before the world believing in foreign policy and developing unashamedly our notions of neutrality. For that reason this is an unnecessary and inappropriate gesture.

Of course the argument will be used, made by decent people who believe in honesty, that perhaps there are economic reasons and advantages to be grafted on to our traditional relationship to the United States. The argument is made about US investment, for example, but these people forget that Mr. Reagan's administration — even by their own logic — is not something which has been of benefit to them in this regard. Under the Reagan administration US investment has dropped. President Reagan's isolationist foreign policy has delayed not only Irish recovery but economic recovery all over Europe. Equally, most recently, those countries such as Ireland who want to by-pass stages of industrial transformation, who want to get into high technology, internationally traded services in the information area, are affected by his most recent policy of an isolationist character: to place obstacles in the way of the transfer of technologies like these. I am sorry, but the argument is not supported by the facts that one would adduce to support it on its own terms.

I want to answer a criticism that has been made very unfairly, though not in this House, that those people who are opposed to the visit of President Reagan are in some way people who have not opposed the breaches of human rights in different parts of the world where they involve the Soviet Union. I was spokesman on foreign affairs for the Labour Party in the other House when I issued statements on Afghanistan and on events in Poland. They are on record. I equally recall marching in support of free trade unions on different occasions and I was not joined by many of the people who want to level accusations like this. The truth of the matter is that we have a unique opportunity to do one of three things: assist in the re-election of Mr. Ronald Reagan with the consequences that we know will follow; we equally can decide to remove ourselves from the re-electoral process; or we can do something which is enormously more valuable, that is, do everything possible to make sure that he is not re-elected. That would be my own choice.

People suggest that maybe the President, who is an elderly man and a very fit one, a model for people who are advancing in years and who wish to stay fit and so on, has not developed these policies overnight. I was very interested in tracing his career from quite early on. This is not a left-wing book I am quoting from. It is David Niven's autobiography Bring on the Empty Horses and for the purposes of those of you who want to run out and buy it, it was published by the Book Club Associates in London quite some time ago. The author is describing events after World War II. I quote from page 93:

Less than two years after the end of World War II, the first microbes of a foul disease that was to spread across the fair face of the United States, surfaced in Hollywood. Senator Joseph McCarthy and his two loathsome lieutenants, Cohn and Schine, had not yet succeeded in infecting the land with McCarthyism, but a cry of `There are Reds under Hollywood's Beds' was raised in Washington and the House Committee on Un-American Activities opened an investigation into Communist infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry. Immense publicity was generated by the ensuing circus-like proceedings under the chairmanship of a highly-biased gentleman named Parnell Thomas. Richard Nixon was a member of the Investigating Team.

Some full-blooded support for the theory that Hollywood was in grave danger of becoming a tool of the Communist Party was given by a long list of `friendly' witnesses, including L. B. Mayer, the Head of M-G-M., Jack Warner of Warner Brothers, Walt Disney, Gary Cooper, Robert Montgomery, Adolphe Menjou, George Murphy (late U.S. Senator from California), Ronald Reagan (who became Governor of the same State) and Ginger Rogers' mother——

The interesting fact of that is that back in the forties was the last occasion on which some actors who were asked questions by Mr. Reagan's committee ever worked in the United States. Members of the Screen Actors Guild were brought before an examining committee with Ronald Reagan giving evidence that they could reasonably be suspected of being Communist supporters. Many of them who, on principle refused to answer the question: "are you or are you not a Communist?" and said they should not be dragged before a tribunal like that, never worked again. One playwright had one of his screen plays never used after that even when it was submitted under a different name.

It was a long time ago that the right-wing rantings of Ronald Reagan began. They were to continue from the forties right through the fifties and the sixties, attacking minority groups, attacking trade unions, attacking countries that believe in peace and appealing in every instance to a fundamentalism that has nothing to do with, and that is sullied by being attached in any way to experience of Irish emigrants who went to the United States. It is to their great credit that his views never took hold among the Irish in America. They were to the forefront in opposing him in every step of his career. That is the record of the Irish in America. The Irish in America today do not support President Reagan's policies, the ones we have been describing.

In making up our minds about this issue, we can take it very simply: do we want to use the visit in such a way as to confer our highest honour on this visit, to remove it out of all ordinary visits in such a way that it will be uniquely valuable for the re-election of a man who will preside over an administration that has certain policies, domestic and international? Do we want to live with the consequences of his re-election? What are the implications for our own foreign policy? Do we want to say that we will attach conditions to our foreign policy? We would be thanked for saying "no".

In conclusion, I want to say that I will be voting against this resolution and not simply not supporting it. It is very important not only to oppose it but to vote against it. In doing so I have a choice facing me, and I accept that there are formulae that are part of the evolution of the democratic process. I have those formulae on one side and I think of the other occasions when I visited, with other Members of the Oireachtas, different refugee camps in the northern part of Nicaragua across the border from El Salvador. I have to say to myself "whom do I choose?" Whose visit is to me the important one — the visit to refugees who as a consequence of his policy wanted to share their food with me or would I just say that I give precedence to the formula of accepting somebody who is the head of a State and a powerful nation? I give that precedence.

I have no hesitation, and I believe many Irish people would not have any hesitation for one second in giving priority to those with whom we should be standing. Let us remember this: if, and it is not unlikely, the President who will be addressing both of these Houses is re-elected in the United States, the events that I have been describing will not evaporate or go away. They will get worse as the unfortunate disastrous speech of last week proved with its riddle-me-ree of inaccuracy, with graphs trying to suggest, for example, that the Soviet assistance to Nicaragua is greater than the United States assistance to El Salvador and so forth. This is pure unadulterated fiction.

There is of course, a massive Soviet assistance to Cuba. That is a fact but the Soviet assistance to Nicaragua is negligible. I will listen to Senator Hanafin providing the evidence that Mrs. Kirkpatrick, the US representative at the UN, has not produced. I remember asking the Secretary General of the United Nations, even privately, if the evidence had been offered to him for the supply of ammunition of the levels of which Mrs. Kirkpatrick speaks, to El Salvador and his reply was: "never even once". There are far more powerful people running the State Department of the United States. Let them put facts up, but until they put up those facts, I suggest that we would be well served by not proceeding in the manner in which this motion invites us to proceed. We would be reflecting more credit and dignity on ourselves by showing that we believed in what we say when we are expressing solidarity with the struggling people of the world if we did not proceed along those lines. It is unnecessary, it is inappropriate but in so far as it is being put forward, it is important that it be opposed and defeated.

Senator Higgins made some reference to waiting for me to produce evidence. I am not quite sure what he meant. I do not know of what evidence he speaks.

I meant the evidence as to Soviet assistance of a military kind to Nicaragua or to El Salvador.

I do not understand why you are asking me to produce evidence.

The Senator seems to express an interest in it.

I was interested in everything the Senator had to say, especially in relation to Ginger Rogers' mother.

The Senator should not reduce my speech to that. I put in some of the entertaining references so as to keep some people happy.

The Senator never fails us. It would be a help to us in supporting the motion if we knew exactly what the Government want. They have invited President Reagan to come to Ireland and so far all I have heard are members of the Government parties pointing out reasons, perhaps good reasons, as to why he should not be welcomed here. It is no use, on the one hand, saying that the President of the United States is welcome and on the other hand using words that would encourage protest throughout the country. Senator Higgins said that his party passed a motion and that the administrators in his party are now notifying the branches throughout the country to protest against President Reagan's visit. Is that correct?

Absolutely.

At least I got something right, because I cannot be sure what it is the Government want. The Government invited President Reagan here, now the members of the Government parties are asking their members to protest about his visit. What is it you want?

That is an over-simplification, and the Senator knows it.

The Government invited him and members of the Government parties are asking people to engage in protests.

Deputy Haughey initiated the invitation so the Senator might like to comment on that as well.

The Government invited him here and it would be a help if the Leader of the House would tell us exactly what he would like us to do.

I should like to make it clear that I invite every Member of the Seanad to vote for the motion.

I will be pleased to vote for the motion but I would like to know if the Government are welcoming the man. From what I have heard I could be forgiven for being unsure as to precisely what it is we are being asked to do.

I deplore President Reagan's policy in Central America and in the Philippines. My view is shared by 84 Members of the American Senate where a vote was taken which condemned the policy of President Reagan in South and Central America. That vote was passed by 84 votes to 12. It is important to mention that. It must never be seen that any protests that take place are anti-American. They may be anti-President Reagan or anti his policy but not anti-American. It is regrettable that there is any protest. The late Mr. de Valera was welcomed as President of Ireland to America. Speeches of welcome were made by leading politicians who proudly described themselves as WASPS. These very people, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of America, detested everything President de Valera ever stood for but they were courteous and they accorded a welcome to him as was befitting the President of Ireland. I would hope that we would do the same in regard to President Reagan. He is coming here as the President of the United States of America. If members of the Government party did not think he was entitled to a courteous welcome they should not have invited him. I am glad he is coming.

Last year Deputy FitzGerald, as Taoiseach, went to America. This year he was accorded a special welcome there. I disagree with the Taoiseach in many respects. I have been horrified at some of his utterances but as an Irishman I would have resented strongly his receiving anything other than a courteous welcome while representing the Irish people. I hope that the same courteous welcome will be given to President Reagan.

I was not in any way making light of what Senator Higgins said. I listened with interest to his contribution. Indeed, I always listen with interest to what he has to say because he is an excellent orator. He speaks with such passion that it is very difficult not to accept what he says.

While I deplore the policy of President Reagan's administration in South and Central America and in the Philippines, I deplore equally Soviet policy in central Europe. Senator Higgins made the claim that Soviet funds are negligible in terms of Nicaragua and El Salvador. I do not know if that is true but I know that one never knows what the Soviet Union are spending in any country or what they are doing. We can see it in the American budget, we may not agree with it but you never know what the Soviets are doing. It is all part of this nuclear madness that exists in the world today. We have fascism and communism. The attitude is that if we do not win the others will win. It is all a matter of fear between all the sides. Where does the madness stop? If one starts condemning people because of their foreign policy let us not just refer to one President because one could talk about many others too. The fact is it is not the President of the Soviet Union who is coming here but the President of the United States. He has been invited, and let his welcome be courteous. At least he is entitled to that as a representative of that great nation which gave sanctuary and homes and a living to so many Irish people throughout the years. Other speakers might make little of that but I do not make little of it. Every time I go to America I am very proud of the large numbers of Irish people and of people of Irish extraction whom I meet. They went to America. They did not go east.

They went east to England.

Yes, but I think the Senator knows what I mean. It has been said here that Mr. Reagan will be helped politically by coming here but I do not think that protests and encouragement of protests on the part of members of the Government parties will help him in that respect. In any case he was elected President of the US without ever coming to Ireland.

Fianna Fáil support this motion tabled by the Government, but it would be a help if the Government would make up their minds as to precisely what they want us to do.

I rise to support the motion as outlined by the Leader of the House. It is most appropriate that the Oireachtas should honour the President of the country which consistently has been the most friendly nation towards Ireland for the last century and more. I have no hesitation, no qualms of conscience, in offering the President a hearty and straight céad míle fáilte. The United States is the most generous of nations, not just towards this country, but towards the Third World and there is no other nation that contributes a greater percentage of its GNP to the Third World countries than the US. In the great majority of cases there are absolutely no strings whatsoever attached. I think it is appropriate that the Government should have extended to the President of the US an invitation to come and visit this country. I am sure this was a longstanding invitation and the President saw fit to take up that invitation this summer. I certainly would not attempt to quantify what value it would be to him electorally or whether there is any value in it or not. It is a wonder that some of the people who are so strongly against the visit did not accuse our Government, this being an election year here, of extending the invitation or renewing it to boost their votes at the polls here next months. People would see that as a suggestion that could not be taken seriously.

If there is going to be any fall-out from this visit it will be that the concentration of publicity will surely make a difference to our tourist trade. It will more likely boost our tourist trade this year than take from it. As well as that, by virtue of the fact that his visit will get coast to coast coverage in the United States on television, it may very well be of benefit to our trade and commerce.

It is not appropriate here that, by virtue of the fact that the Leader of the House has tabled this motion, we should embark on a debate on US foreign policy or on Russian foreign policy or indeed on the foreign policy of any country. We should not look and x-ray the policies of any particular country, because it is very easy to stand here in the Seanad and discuss in glowing or heated terms the policies or the conditions under which any people live or are forced to live or survive thousands of miles away. It is not relevant. When I say that I support the Government's invitation and shall stand and welcome President Reagan I am not saying that I support his policies or that I understand his policies or the policies of his country.

A couple of years ago we had a very worth while debate on foreign policy. The last occasion was when a motion on Afghanistan and the Russian involvement in that country was tabled here in the Seanad. That was an occasion when we had an opportunity of reading about the situation in that country. I do not think we should be talking here, either supporting or by way of opposition to the motion before the House, about Afghanistan, Poland, Albania or wherever. I do not think that is relevant. What is relevant is an opportunity this country has, and the Oireachtas has in particular, of welcoming the President of a great country, a free country, a free democracy. We must remember that the US has consistently defended freedom throughout the world and indeed the one thing that has to be said about the Americans is that they have consistently put their money where their mouth is because they have spent absolutely thousands of millions of dollars in aid to so many countries across the world.

During the period when I acted as vice president of the Consultative Assembly of the ACP I had an opportunity of visiting 29 of 30 developing countries. It was a tremendous experience to meet the American people in charge of their bilateral aid. I remember staying for some time with the person in charge of the Ford Foundation who had responsibility for disbursing some $200 million dollars per year, and there were certainly no strings attached to that. It was aid towards education and famine relief in the West African group of countries. I think there are very few multi-national companies from any other country who can do that. If we are looking in an x-ray fashion at the foreign policy of the US we should look at some of the other things they do as well. Of course the answer to that will be that that particular corporation or multi-national wanted to sell their cars or their produce to these people. I do not think there would be a tremendous lot of trade in some of the African deserts where their people were operating.

Earlier this year the Taoiseach was accorded a very warm and friendly reception in the United States, and I believe we should certainly use this opportunity to return that hospitality. I am confident the great majority of the Irish people will do that. I do not think that before doing so they will make any attempt to pass judgement on the policies of the US or indeed of any other country. The "in" thing with the trendy set, both clerical and lay, in this country now is to show great concern for the Third World and the South American problems and policies in particular. It is easy to have concern for minorities living thousands of miles away under dictatorships, but I believe that it would be equally painful to get a kick in the groin from a left jackboot as from a right jackboot. We should not be misled by those problems. It is too easy to concentrate on the problems thousands of miles away while, at the same time, it does not suit very many of us to be equally concerned with the plight of the itinerants or the homeless poor in our cities and major towns throughout the country.

Senator Higgins in his very interesting speech said that he thought President Reagan would not be converted from his policies by views expressed at a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas or by people talking to him here in Leinster House. I would contend that surely he will not be deterred or indeed converted from his policies by those people waving placards outside in the street. I am sure the Government have made it quite clear in the United Nations what their policy is on all the major issues that have been raised in the United Nations over the years. We should take the opportunity to salute the American people through their first citizen, their President for the time being, when he visits this country next month. I believe the great majority of the Irish people will be happy to extend to him a céad míle fáilte and I hope that people will not bring discredit or tarnish our image of a hospitable and a civilised people. I support the motion.

I do not know whom Senator McDonald was talking about when he spoke about people whose concern for human rights and for the oppressed was more consistently expressed overseas than it was at home. Nobody is under any illusion about my view on this visit. It has been well recorded in the media. I attempted to record it here quite inappropriately last week on the Order of Business. I would have to, without boasting, defend the fact that I, as a Member of this House, have two Bills to do with the rights of the oppressed at home on the Order Paper. The one thing I have found among those who are organising quite spontaneously, on extremely limited funds, to oppose this visit is that they are my natural allies on every issue where I feel strongly about the inadequacies, the injustices and the inequalities in this country. The people I can turn to confidently for support are the same people who are now organising to register their absolute and utter disapproval of the policies of the present United States Administration.

The occasion of a State visit should be an occasion full of dignity. It should be an occasion when a country as hospitable as ours could display the full extent of its hospitality, the willingness to accept people, the willingness to communicate, the willingness to listen and the willingness to share what we have of our traditions with others. It should be a colourful and happy occasion. It behoves Governments in particular to be careful about those to whom they offer the full trappings of a formal State visit, because there is a Head of Government in the country nearest to us who is a regular visitor to our shores. I do not think anyone would dream of offering that particular country or its Head of State the facilities of a full State visit here, not because they are a repressive country but because we disapprove so fundamentally of their policies in a number of areas and perhaps because the Irish people would not be too happy with that. I refer to the British Head of State.

It is a bit much to say that we accept all visitors. We accept selected visitors to whom we give varying degrees of approval or disapproval. Even in a country as hospitable as ours there have to be limits to our hospitality. There has to be a limit to the extent to which we distinguish the office from the individual, to which we distinguish the office from the policies of the current holder of that office, to the extent to which we as politicians distinguish principles from what we might have believed on one occasion to be popular, to the extent to which we distinguish what is effectively political expediency and in some cases political mythology from principle and to distinguish in particular between commercial expediency in terms of suggestions of a coup for our tourism or a boost for our tourism or an advertisement for some of our grand hotels which are now installing gold plated shower taps to impress the President of the United States. Am I the only one in either House of the Oireachtas who is offended by that sort of vulgar opulence which apparently is now to be the manifestation of Irish hospitality — gold plated taps, gold plated shower units etc? Is that the new kind of Irish hospitality or have we been infected with a particularly vulgar kind of international consumerism? Concepts of hospitality, welcome and courtesy about which we have heard so much here today and about which so much was said in the other House are not absolutes. None of us believes that we have an absolute obligation to be courteous to absolutely everybody we meet. None of us believes that we have an absolute obligation to be silent in the face of what other people have to say to us. None of us believes that we have an absolute obligation to be properly behaved in the face of what we would regard as fundamentally improper behaviour. Most of us have been brought up in a religious tradition which particularly emphasises the need for moral courage and the need not to tolerate, by our silence, any manifestation of injustice or evil. We may wish to suppress our consciences, we may wish to suppress our revulsion, because we are worried about the consequences of a specific and detailed expression of our revulsion and of the instincts of our consciences. We may wish to avoid moral judgment and may cloud the issue in diplomatic language and the niceties of international politics because we wish to avoid such moral judgments.

I was interested to hear the Government Chief Whip in the other House say that he could not see where conscience came into the question of President Reagan's visit. As far as I am concerned the question of President Reagan's visit is as much, and probably more, a fundamental issue of conscience for me as the other issue which dominated our consciences for so long in the past 12 months.

The President of the United States is coming to visit us. He should be welcome. That would be the instinct of most of us. It would be the instinct of the vast majority of us that in principle the President of any country should be welcome, particularly the elected representative of what is a parliamentary democracy. But when profound reservations arise they must be confronted because whether we like it or not this is a visit by not just the ceremonial head of State but the chief executive of a country. Here I would make a distinction between this and our President visiting the Federal Republic of Germany for instance, which is an entirely ceremonial affair. President Reagan is the effective head of the United States Government. Therefore, his activities whether they be the places he visits or what he says or who receives him, are effectively political gestures of a most important kind. They are not just little ceremonial niceties. Therefore, a political exercise obliges from all of us who practise politics not a political cop out but a political response and a response based on political analysis, not incidentally, on vulgar personal abuse, and I would not dream of resorting to such.

There is in this country a profound and widespread disquiet and disgust and quite extensive incredulity about the present form of what is politely called US foreign policy, in particular in Central America, but also on the question of the escalation of the already frightening arms race. We have to remind ourselves that we are stuck here on the west coast of Europe and that there are advisers to the present President of the United States who have suggested that a nuclear war fought in Europe could be won by the United States at far less damage to the United States than all previous prognoses about such wars had forecast. There is evidence — of course it has been denied — that the strategy of the present US Administration is to develop a scenario in Europe where they can win by first strike a nuclear war between themselves by proxy in Europe and the Soviet Union. If that is the case we are threatened by the present military and armament policies of this administration and we have not just a moral choice to make, we have a choice which may well affect our own survival. The armaments policy of this United States Administration has been responsible for a frightening increase in international tension. I make no excuses for the other super power on this issue, but we are not in the business ever of welcoming representatives of that other super power to our country and, therefore, I do not think the same emphasis is needed.

I am fascinated by the number of Irish people in business and outside business who are worried about the effect on investment of our protests against President Reagan's visit but who seem to be prepared to ignore the real threat to our future. It is not whether one US corporation or another invests here but whether there is a nuclear war which will obliterate us all. That is the most fundamental threat that faces humanity.

On the question of Central America it needs to be said that we are not talking about some country or some group of countries that are somehow similar to our own. In history and above all in the scale of their poverty they are fundamentally different from ourselves. They have one common factor with us, they are all Roman Catholic countries. Something that was particularly offensive to the Irish nation during the imposition of martial law in Poland was the fact that many people in Ireland felt that they shared a common experience at least through their religion.

As regards the countries of Central America there has been a considerable amount of awareness of their needs and problems generated in this country through the work of that most admirable of Church organisations, and it is not often that I use the word `admirable' in the direction of a Church organisation, because I have always regarded myself as being in the disloyal and less than accepted opposition inside my Church, but nevertheless there is a glorious exception to that, and that is Trócaire. Trócaire's detailing of the extent of oppression and injustice in Central America needs at this time, if one is to make a judgment about America in what is called euphemistically its foreign policy in Central America, to be looked at. I will come back to that particular euphemism later.

For instance in Guatemala 5 per cent of the population receives 34 per cent of the national income and 2.1 per cent of landowners own 72 per cent of the land. One could go on through all of those. A magnificent headline, frightening in its magnificence, in another Trócaire document says that there are no political prisoners in Guatemala, there are only political murders, which is a nice, simple and efficient solution. That is a country which the United States sees as having a future and continuing as a prospective ally in defence of America's vital interests in Central America. In Honduras 65 per cent of the adults are illiterate and 35 per cent of rural peasants own no land and 128 out of every 1,000 children die before the age of one year. Seventy per cent of children suffer from malnutrition and the United States is currently building the most extensive air bases there with a capacity to strike in huge scale militarily against any country in Central America. That, in contradiction of what the previous speaker said, is the most fundamental form of American investment in Central America at present — the investment in military hardware. In El Salvador, which has the lowest per capita consumption of calories in the whole of Latin America, 2 per cent of the population own close to 60 per cent of the land and the average industrial wage is £30 per month.

It was into that political tinder box that President Ronald Reagan rode, into what was a potentially explosive political mix of injustice, oppression, inhumanity and cruelty. And he made a most extraordinary speech to the American people last week. It would probably be a useful exercise if somebody had supplied us with the entire text of the speech, but I can only rely on extracts from The Irish Times of 2 May. I quote:

He accused the Sandinista regime of imposing "Communist terror" on Nicaragua. "They seek to export their terror to every other country in the region."

The danger of Cuban and Nicaraguan aggression "abetted by the Soviet Union" was more imminent than that of a nuclear war, he concluded.

I think those of us living in Europe would have somewhat different priorities on that because we are close to where he proposes to fight his nuclear war. He then referred to a

"bold attempt by the Soviet Union, Cuba and Nicaragua to install Communism by force throughout the hemisphere."

It will not be Cuba or the Soviet Union or Nicaragua or anybody else that will install militantly left wing regimes in Central America. It will be the cruel injustice of the economic system and the necessity of the people to respond in the only way they see from the only leadership that they are being offered.

Finally, on the President's speech, and I am glad Senator Higgins mentioned it, was the extraordinary putting together of Soviet aid to Cuba and Nicaragua in order to suggest that there were vast amounts of aid being given to Nicaragua. It was very difficult to get, either from the American Embassy or anywhere else, a breakdown between the two countries because what it would display, in fact, is that, as has been the case for 25 years almost, there is a vast amount of Soviet aid, a large part of it incidentally economic, going to Cuba and there is minuscule aid of any kind going from the Soviet Union to Nicaragua and even less of a military kind. That is the official United States version, and if there is to be a discussion in this House on those issues we should have a look at the credibility of the information that is supplied by this current regime. I will make a couple of brief references so that people will know how reliable the briefings will be that they will be supplied with by the ever-vigilant Embassy of the United States which works so hard that it even tries to persuade Senator Higgins and myself to change our minds about Central America. That is a definition of eternal optimism.

Senator Higgins referred to the famous photographs which were alleged to indicate that peasants were murdered by the Sandanistas and which turned out to be photographs taken before the Sandinistas came to power, murdered by the Somoza regime. There was the infamous White Paper on Central America which the United States Government produced and which they subsequently, in the face of criticism from newspapers as eminently conservative as the Wall Street Journal, conceded to be full of errors and which they finally had to concede was error ridden, but they still stood over the conclusions albeit without any evidence to support those conclusions.

There is documented evidence that this regime has distorted the facts, has corrupted the facts and has indeed ignored the facts, in order to sustain the mythological idea that there is communist aggression in Central America. There is no such thing. In this document which the United States Embassy supplied to some of us dated 16 January 1984 there is a report on the situation in El Salvador. It draws 13 conclusions, and of those at least ten are fundamentally erroneous and factually incorrect, and that is the basis of United States policy in Central America. Then there is the myth of democracy in El Salvador cemented and underlined by our national broadcasting service on the 9 o'clock news last Saturday night when they announced that President Duarte was the first "freely elected President of El Salvador in 52 years", a load of concocted nonsense which would be disputed by most European observers who attended either election and would be definitely disputed by all of those from what would be called the democratic socialist movement in Western Europe who are in El Salvador.

I have left Nicaragua to the last because I think it is so important. Even in the terms of international diplomacy, even in what is called the necessary realities and the necessary realisms of international foreign policy, there is something particularly offensive about US attitudes to Nicaragua. When the present Government in Nicaragua, the Sandinista Government, took over there was £1.7 million left in the national coffers. Nevertheless, as Senator Higgins pointed out, they have managed the most dramatic reversal in illiteracy in Central America in the past 25 years. They have increased literacy by 53 per cent in less than five years. They have managed the most dramatic construction of houses, without money as they would proudly say themselves. They have managed to introduce agrarian reform of a very liberal and mixed economy type. They still have only 28 per cent of the productive economy of manufacturing industry in State hands in Nicaragua. This is the country which has been portrayed as the hot-bed of Marxist-Leninism in Central America, where 72 per cent of the productive capacity is still in private hands.

The truth about Nicaragua is that it is a free country, probably the only free country in Central America. It has demonstrated that it is possible to reconcile poverty and justice and to have justice even in a pitifully poor country like Nicaragua. The so-called contrast — those whom President Reagan described as freedom fighters, are there not because of Marxist-Leninist violence being exported by Nicaragua. Nicaragua lacks the funds to even develop its own economy not to mention getting involved in the export of violence and revolution — not because of any sort of concern for the civil right of the people of Nicaragua, because that myth of the suppression of basic freedom in Nicaragua has been laid to rest in Ireland.

As Senator Higgins said, when the reactionary archbishop had his speech published every Monday in the most prominent Opposition newspaper you cannot say that fundamental freedoms have been threatened. Senator Higgins — I suppose I should not keep quoting him — pointed out on one famous occasion that there is only one country in Central America where the United States Ambassador can walk freely without an armed escort and that, ironically enough, is in Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. We can get away from the myth that there is some sort of fundamental suppression of freedom. Extraordinary concern was displayed here recently for the Miskito Indians by people who never heard of the Miskito Indians, who ignore the widespread massacre of the Indian population in Guatemala, who ignore the equally widespread massacre of the native populations in the Philippines and in Brazil, who suddenly have developed a touching concern for the Miskito Indians. Even though there is no evidence that any of those people were killed, they were simply rather brutally and completely unfeelingly moved from one area to another. To suggest that this is anywhere nearly comparable with the appalling corruption of human rights all over Central America suggests to me a clutching after straws and an attempt to produce a spurious balance in people's analyses of Central America.

The truth about Nicaragua was underlined by Jean Kirkpatrick, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, when she said: "We cannot have the Sandinistas exporting left wing ideas all over Central America." That is the problem about Nicaragua. It is not violence, it is not warfare, it is simply the ideas they espouse and the success of their revolution. President Reagan's so-called freedom fighters are in fact terrorists, terrorising innocent people, attacking schools, children, civilians, attacking industrial targets and now, ultimately, mining the harbours of Nicaragua, this in the defence of freedom. It is terrorism. It is terrorism of the most appalling kind by the most powerful nation in the world against the weakest nation in the world in defence of the interests of the United States in that country.

It is in that context that this invitation needs to be judged. We have a visiting head of State and we are told that necessary formalities must be met. People refer again and again to President Kennedy's visit 22 years ago. Is it not extraordinary that everybody seems to have forgotten that another United States President visited this country in between? President Richard Nixon visited us and we did not have a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas. My university, which has disgraced itself, did not feel it necessary to confer an honorary degree. We do not even talk about it now because after he was ultimately disgraced we prefer to pretend the whole thing did not happen. Indeed that small group of brave people, the Quakers in this country, have more insight and more courage than the rest of us because they knew that he was wrong and they had the courage to say it and to show it. If Richard Nixon could be welcomed as the United States President without the extra trappings of a joint sitting of the Houses of the Oireachtas and without an honorary degree from the National University, there is no reason why this present visitor should be treated differently. It is possible to go through the appropriate diplomatic formalities without falling over yourself to pretend that he is your closest friend. There was no necessity for it and there is no necessity for it.

In passing, one would have to throw out this American investment idea and dismiss it for what it is, a complete and utter red herring, if I may coin a pun. Anybody, and I speak as one with some professional qualification in the area, from an engineering background, who has ever studied or learned or been involved in the taking of decisions about fundamental industrial investment will tell you how far down the line sentiment and concern and what the people think of your President are on that. The basic bottom line decision is, where can you make money? That is both the virtue and the vice of the capitalist system, but it is the mark of its efficiency and its success, the ruthless and often valueless decision to invest where the maximum return is possible. It is on that basis that US investment in this country will be made, has been made and will continue to be made. To suggest that there is some sort of pool of Irish American sentiment just waiting to invest vast sums in this country provided we are nice to our forthcoming visitor is to my mind sentimental nonsense of the highest order.

The two biggest Irish-American investments in this country that I am aware of, are Quigley-Magnesite in Dungarvan and the Ford Motor Corporation in Cork. They have one thing in common, one is closed and the other is about to close. So much for sentiment. So much for American sentiment in investment. If they cannot make money here, cheerio Ireland Nobody should be fooled by that idea.

The one about tourism is fascinating. Our biggest tourist market is not the United States. It is not western Europe. It is our nearest neighbour. Many of those who are most given to a fairly lurid kind of anti-British rhetoric, which has frightened off vastly greater numbers of British tourists, now are telling us that we all must be silent and behave ourselves and almost genuflect because we will frighten away the American tourists. It is a spurious excuse. It has got nothing to do with the issue. Every opinion poll shows that 60 per cent or so of the American people disapprove of what President Reagan stands for in Central America.

There is the red scare nonsense, the suggestion that we are all being funded from Moscow, that all the priests and all the nuns and all the returned missionaries who are at the forefront of this campaign have roubles sticking out of their back pockets in vast quantities. I want to reveal a secret for one of these subversive organisations, and that is, that the Cork campaign against Reagan's foreign policies had a treasurer's report last Monday night. They had £4 in the kitty. Either the Soviet Union is impoverished or this myth is well exposed for what it is, another piece of propaganda from people who apparently lack the ability to confront us on intellectual argument. By the way, since it seems to be necessary, I am a patron of the Ireland/Poland Solidarity Committee, which is the group in Ireland which has campaigned vigorously for the rights of the free trade union Solidarnosc in Poland. I have spoken at meetings about it and I have not seen any other Member of this House except Senator Higgins at those meetings. I also have a certain uniqueness in this House in the sense that I suspect I am in a small minority, that I actually went to see the representative of the Soviet Government in this country to express my deep concern about both Afghanistan and Poland, something that I have also done with the American Ambassador.

Can we get away from those myths about Soviet influence and red scares? It is the Irish people who are concerned about American foreign policy. It is the Irish people who have pushed Irish politicians to an extent that is quite unbelievable. I have yet to hear any Member of either House of the Oireachtas say that he or she supports US policy in Central America. The best argument they can make is that we should not demonstrate that we must be courteous to a visitor, but there is apparently nobody left in this country to defend American policy in Central America, and for that we have reason to be grateful, particularly to many Church agencies and to a man whom I will be fighting against in the next election — though I hope not, because he might be in the other House — Senator Higgins, who has contributed to that.

The real issue here is the poor of the world, and the astonishing assertion by a previous speaker that the United States contributes more per capita to overseas aid than any other country in the world is a load of ludicrous nonsense. They are the least generous in their overseas aid. We had to pass a Bill through this House quite recently for the International Development Agency whereby we, one of the poorer of the developed countries, had to increase our aid to that body to make up for what the United States refuses to give, a direct consequence of the policies of the present incumbent. In every world forum where international aid is being discussed the present US regime has either reduced its aid or attached extraordinary political qualifications to any aid that is being offered.

We have had a lot of talk about poverty in the world. This specific visit and this specific invitation to address the joint Houses of the Oireachtas is a confrontation with our consciences to invite us to say where precisely we stand, or is it all rhetoric or do we believe it? Do we stand, for instance, by the Irish missionaries in Central America and the Philippines who have made it well known through their orders what they think of this country welcoming President Ronald Reagan? Fr. O'Brien made it perfectly clear recently on a television programme what he thought we should do when President Reagan visits this country. Are we standing by them or are they now inconvenient? Remember there are more Catholic priests being killed in Central America now than in Eastern Europe in the last 40 years in spite of our great horrors of Communism, a view that I share on many issues. But the places where Catholic missionaries are now in threat of their lives are not under those frightening red Communist regimes that people love to talk about but under regimes that are directly supported and sustained by the present United States Government.

It needs to be said that it is not really foreign policy that I, for one, object to. It is the deliberate use of terrorism to destabilise an independent country, and that terrorism financed by a democracy is what appals me. We cannot, for instance, and we are not prepared to, speak to the elected representatives of the Catholic people of West Belfast because we do not like support for violence but we are prepared to ignore all those things and extend a céad míle fáilte, which seems to be the appropriate expression, to the President of the United States who does precisely that in Nicaragua and makes no bones about it — to his credit he is at least honest about it.

As I said at the beginning an invitation to the President of the United States to address the joint Houses of the Oireachtas, a State visit from the head of a major State, should be an occasion for good-will and hospitality. It cannot be and should not be, and this invitation should not have been offered. We could have had his visit without the extra trappings of approval that these things convey. Like Senator Higgins, I will be making my views known in what I regard and what I deem to be the most appropriate fashion.

Finally, I will say that if a visiting head of State indicates publicly that he does not accept the rule of international law in his dealings with other countries I do not feel obliged by the normal protocols of Parliament in the way I deal with his visit.

I regret the context in which we are debating this motion. The reality, as we know, is that the advance party for President Reagan have already compiled and itinerary and for the particular time on 4 June I have no doubt at all that there is an entry that President Reagan will be addressing a joint meeting of the Houses of the Oireachtas. I regret the context because it is clear from the motion and from the express wording of the proposal in the motion that it is something out of the ordinary. The motion states that it is proposed to "mark the event in a signal manner", a rather unusual turn of phrase, but clearly to mark it as something special, something unusual and something which requires motions before both Houses of the Oireachtas and therefore a debate such as we are having in the Dáil and the Seanad today.

The context of that should be that if it is proposed to do something unusual or significant in that way those who wish to do it would be able to point to the grounds for so doing and the basis on which we deem it appropriate to confer such a signal honour or mark in a significant way the event of the presence of somebody in this country. There may be some who feel that the mere presence of a President of the United States — regardless of who he or she might be at any time, regardless of any policies being pursued by the particular administration — would be sufficient. That is one possible course that could be adopted regardless of the personality involved and of the policies being pursued. Adopting that approach it would be enough for that person to touch Irish soil for us to spring into action and invite such a person to address both Houses of the Oireachtas. But this has not been our approach in Ireland. It has not been our practice in fact because as Senator Brendan Ryan pointed out we have had a visit from a President of the United States, President Nixon, whose visit was not marked in this way as a signal event, and we did not call the two Houses of the Oireachtas together.

Therefore the onus or the burden of establishing why we are conferring this honour or marking the visit in this signal way should be on those on both sides of the House who wish to see that happen. This is a parliamentary motion, and the case should be made by those who agree with the motion. I have not heard that case made. I have not heard anything, although I have been present for the entirety of the debate, which justified the conferring of a signal honour on this President of the United States who is the head of this particular United States Administration. On the contrary, I have heard substantial criticism from all sides — including from those who are prepared to support this motion — of important aspects of United States foreign policy particularly in relation to Central America. It is a little puzzling. It is puzzling that we are being invited to note or to mark or in some way to signify that this is a particular and special visit and an event for which we deem it appropriate to confer a particular honour.

The first point then is that to date in this debate no case has been made out for doing so. On the contrary, I would say that the case for not marking it in a signal way, for not according this particular honour, has been very effectively made out in this House to anyone who has been listening to the debate. It is right of course to emphasise that prima facie and clearly the Irish people are courteous, hospitable and a welcoming people, and that we have very strong links — personal links, economic links, historical links and identification in many ways with aspects of the United States — which would confirm the prima facie position that the President of the United States as head of the United States would be welcome on a visit to this country and might be a person to whom it would be considered that an offer would be made to address the two Houses of the Oireachtas if the circumstances of that Administration warranted this recognition in some significant way. It is significant that the focus of the opposition to this motion and the reasons given by those of us who will abstain if the President of the United States does address the two Houses on 4 June has centred on the foreign policy of this current Administration. I would submit that that focus is the correct one in seeking to assess whether we should mark in a signal way — as the motion calls for — the event of the visit of the President of the United States to this country.

It is not appropriate for us to open up for examination in this context the internal and therefore domestic policy of this US Administration. That is a matter for the people of the United States, although it is something about which individually we may have quite strong views as to whether we would approve of that policy, as to whether on visits to the United States we see evidence of aspects of that policy which we might on a personal basis agree or disagree with. I do not feel that the domestic policy approach is an appropriate basis on which to assess whether as an independent country we should afford the special platform and mark in this signal way the presence of a foreign Head of State by inviting him to address the two Houses of the Oireachtas. The proper and relevant focus is clearly on the foreign policy.

It is relevant to have that focus for a number of reasons: first of all because the foreign policy of the United States has a very substantial impact on the world in which we live, a very real impact. I will come to certain aspects of that later; secondly, because it is the foreign policy of a democracy, of a democratic country, and therefore one which is particularly susceptible to public opinion both within the United States and to the effect of world opinion, including the opinion expressed collectively or individually or even substantially by the populations of other countries. We have an opportunity to influence public opinion in the United States, to influence it at a particularly significant time during election year. It is a relevant consideration therefore to note that the President of the United States is also the Republican candidate for the office of President in the forthcoming election in the United States next November. Therefore, as was certainly agreed by Senator Lanigan and other Senators who have contributed, it would be naive of us not to take into account that it would be part of his calculations and part of his strategy in visiting Ireland that it would have potential electoral advantage for him, in the runup to the contest for the Presidency. We have a responsibility to weigh very carefully the effect which the reception which President Reagan receives in this country will have on his prospects of being reelected, what effect it will have on the votes that he may be seeking to influence by coming to this country particularly the Irish vote and indeed significantly the Catholic vote within the United States. These I believe are important considerations in deciding on whether the present incumbent of the office, President Reagan, should be afforded a signal honour which would involve the two Houses coming together by agreement to do so by motion and to welcome in that formal way and listen to a speech made by the President to both Houses.

I would submit that the evidence we have of the foreign policy of this US Administration and the attitudes towards that foreign policy clearly expressed by Senators on all sides of the Houses in this debate do not warrant the conferring of that signal honour or marking in that signal way the event of the visit of this President of the United States to Ireland. The distinction was properly drawn by Senator McGuinness, and repeated by others, that we are not talking simply about the formal titular head of the people of the United States; that the President of the United States is the head of an administration responsible for the policies of that administration and that you cannot separate or divorce the two aspects of the Presidency. In very significant ways the foreign policy of this President has impacted very seriously on parts of the world and indeed has had an overall effect on the very prospects for the future of this planet. I would not even hesitate to put it in that particular context, when one looks at the acceleration of the nuclear arms race and the establishment of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Europe and the heightening of tension that has followed from that. We have a President whose foreign policy — particularly in Central America, in the Philippines, in relation to the nuclear arms race — is a subject of very widespread criticism by elected representatives and by citizens of this country who have been following the effect of that foreign policy. As has been said, it is witnessed first hand in many parts of the globe by Irish missionaries and Irish workers in development agencies who have reported back and who in fact have been responsible for an increasing awareness in this country both of the distortion of information put out about these areas and of the very serious effect of the policy of the United States, so that there is no aspect of the foreign policy of the United States which brings this particular head of that administration within the characterisation of someone on whom we should confer a signal honour or whose visit we should mark as a signal event in this way.

On the contrary it is not only an opportunity but a grave responsibility on those of us who are so obviously concerned to seek to express our concern publicly — precisely because we express it to a democratic people. We are expressing our concern to a country where the public opinion and the view held in this country of the foreign policy of the United States will be noted and will be covered and will be examined and will be considered. We hope it will have an impact in influencing the attitudes of the United States citizens in relation to the forthcoming elections and generally the policies of any future administration of the United States. Therefore I have deliberately chosen to emphasise the context of this motion, because the substantial arguments have been very eloquently put by other contributors to this debate, to try to clarify what we are doing. We are seeking to confer a signal honour by marking in this signal way the visit of the present President of the United States to Ireland. Why? No reason for that has been advanced in any relevant or convincing context during this debate. The basis on which we would do it has not been put before us. What has been very clearly put before us, and what I intend to refer to briefly in a few moments, are the many cogent reasons why we should not do it, why we should not confer a signal additional honour on the present incumbent of the office of Presidency of the United States because of his foreign policy, because of his impact on the world, because we cannot subscribe to and endorse that foreign policy in very significant areas and because we have an opportunity and responsibility to make that clear in peaceful terms, in polite and courteous terms but to make it perfectly clear.

Just to refer briefly to some aspects of the present foreign policy approach of the United States. I think the emphasis has been placed rightly on the policy in countries of Central America as one area of the foreign policy which is unacceptable to a very broad range of Irish public opinion and clearly also to a number of elected representatives of the Irish people.

I would like to refer to an important report compiled last September by a delegation from the World Council of Churches which visited Nicaragua from 4-10 September 1983. This is a significant report because it is not from a political source, it is from what would be very widely regarded as a very impartial, fair and honest source. Therefore it has a particular relevance to our information about and attitudes to this area. I want to quote from a passage taken from page 7 of this report, paragraph D, on the situation in Nicaragua as found by this delegation. It is as follows:

Internally, Nicaragua is the scene of many encouraging developments, even in the midst of enormous difficulties. In the areas of literacy, education, health and housing, to name but a few, great strides have been taken to meet the vast needs of a population long subject during Somoza days to gross poverty, ignorance and exploitation. Many of Nicaragua's difficulties, though to be sure not all, are precipitated by the external aggression. The attempts of the Sandinista Government, as we perceive it, is not, as is often alleged, to establish a totalitarian Marxist state. Though there are undoubtedly Marxists in Government circles, what impresses us is the pluralism in the government, the service of Christians, lay and clergy, at every level of government, and the sense we get that the kind of totalitarianism so rampant in many countries of Latin America (e.g. Chile, Uruguay, Guatemala, El Salvador) simply does not exist in Nicaragua. What we see is a government faced with tremendous problems, some seemingly insuperable, bent on a great experiment which, though precarious and incomplete at many points, provides hope to the poor sectors of society, improves the conditions of education, literacy and health and for the first time offers the Nicaraguan people a modicum of justice for all rather than a society offering privilege exclusively to the wealthy, foreign and domestic large investors, and to the powerful in the state. The government has indeed exercised an option for the poor which has led to great improvements in the standard of life of the poor majority, even though the once-privileged elite minority now is not able to maintain the standards it once enjoyed at the expense of the majority.

Within this new society we are particularly impressed by the new role accorded to women. The Nicaraguan society, as we were often told, has been traditionally a very "macho" society in which women have been exploited, used and treated in a subservient manner. No-one claims that this cultural pattern has been fully overcome, but major efforts have been conducted to reverse this situation. Women are accorded places of high importance in government and society, the exploitation of sex symbols in advertising has been outlawed, and former prostitutes are being rehabilitated. While much remains to be improved, women today have a new place of dignity and importance in Nicaraguan society.

That is an impartial description of a society which apparently poses an immense threat, and arouses fear and apprehension in the minds of the current United States Administration. That policy, as has been already been pointed out, is severely criticised by many Members of the United States Senate and by many editorial writers and by large sections of the media in the United States as well as by a large section of public opinion there. I would like to refer briefly to an editorial in the Boston Sunday Globe of August of last year which in its entire thrust is very critical of President Reagan's policy in relation to Nicaragua and then concludes as follows:

Americans have had four years to watch the Sandinista revolution. If Nicaragua were hurtling towards Stalinist aggression and repression, as the Reagan administration has claimed, it would have happened by now. Instead Sandinistas are engaged in a serious, popular, mostly well-intentioned and frequently competent, national experiment, not altogether unlike our own revolution although set in a very different and far more difficult context. For American to try to destroy such a revolution as a fear that its example will awaken the downtrodden in other nations is a contemptible historical wrong.

That approach is, for me, seriously compounded by the recent high-handed decision of the United States Administration to refuse to accept the juris liction of the International Court of Justice, the World Court at The Hague, for a period of two years, in relation to its policy in Central America. That constitutes a refusal to accept a peaceful and impartial judicial means of determining issues such as the background to the claim by Nicaragua of the mining of its ports and other activities alleged to be carried out with the support of this United States Administration. That really brings home the contempt for world opinion that appears to be a feature of the approach to foreign policy of this particular Administration, and approach which must be strongly criticised by other democratic countries in the world including specifically this country. There have been protests made about the current United States Administration policy in Central America. I was present in the other House earlier this afternoon when the point was made that criticism has been expressed by the Irish Government on aspects of the current foreign policy of this United States Administration. Why then are we conferring this exceptional and signal honour? How can we not see that it will be interpreted as a bland endorsement of the present United States Administration, and specifically of the present holder of the office of the President of the United States, who is a Republican candidate for re-election next November? We cannot explain — by the silent witness of elected representatives — that somewhere along the line they are to be understood as having, at an earlier stage, through the Government, protested, or that they will at a later stage, at some other time when there is no focus of media attention, register some kind of protest. It is when the cameras of the United States media — and specifically the election camera crew of President Reagan who are busy preparing videos to be part of his promotional campaign for re-election — are focused on Leinster House on 4 June, that the impact of that address to the joint Houses will be clear to the rest of the world. It will be clear that this signal honour is being conferred on his Administration, and that there is necessarily implied approval of the policies of that Administration in conferring such an honour.

Therefore I come back to the point at which I started. I very much regret the context of this. In a sense the Houses of the Oireachtas have not been well treated by the manner in which this has arisen. The decision has already been taken and accepted, and it was put on the itinerary when President Reagan set the dates for accepting the long-standing invitation to come and visit this country, first extended to him by Deputy Haughey when he was Taoiseach in 1981. The date was set for the visit and at that point it was pencilled in as part of the itinerary that he would address both Houses. I feel that not very much thought went into that, that whoever said it would be appropriate was not in fact considering the very real criticism, the very widespread public opinion that exists in this country and is represented in both Houses of the Oireachtas, which is deeply worried and concerned about the foreign policy of this particular Administration which does not believe that the present incombent — the present President of the United States — warrants the signal honour or that the event of his visit to the State warrants to be commemorated or celebrated in that particular way. Therefore, I, too, and for those reasons, will be opposing this motion. If the motion is carried, as it appears it will be, I shall be absenting myself on the occasion when the President addresses the joint Houses of the Oireachtas.

In considering this motion nobody can ignore the policy of the American Government and President Reagan in Nicaragua, El Salvador and the other countries which have been referred to at considerable length in this motion. These policies are totally unacceptable in principle and are completely reprehensible in practice. There can be no doubt about that. In considering whether a joint sitting should be held, we should not mince our words about our abhorrence of what is happening in these countries.

It can, of course, be argued that the Eastern bloc have done much the same: they have done the same, or worse, in Czechoslovakia, Afghanistan and in various other countries. What has disturbed people in this country which has known so much oppression in the past is that the United States, which is regarded by many people as the champion of democracy and which was the refuge for many hundreds of thousands of oppressed people, should indulge in these policies. Many admirers of the US are saddened that President Reagan should let down the US by what he is doing at present. I will not say any more about what is happening in South America as it has been dealt with in great detail by previous speakers and I fully accept the criticisms that have been made.

Another aspect of President Reagan's policies that has not been adverted to so much is in relation to world peace and the present policy of the US in regard to nuclear missiles. It seems that we are heading for a nuclear holocaust. If this is the case, the US are at least as responsible for the situation as is the USSR.

Hear, hear.

There is no justification for the proliferation of nuclear missiles which is taking place at present. If they are regarded merely as a deterrent, which is what is said by those countries, then one-fiftieth part of what is there would be sufficient as a deterrent. I do not believe that either the US or the USSR want war or to dominate the world but both go blindly on, each from fear of the other. If President Reagan would take the first step in withdrawing missiles rather than adding to them, I am convinced that the USSR would follow and the situation could gradually be de-fused. If he did that, he would deserve the gratitude of the world and he might receive a reception in this country considerably warmer than he seems to be likely to get. That aspect of his policy is just as serious as the aspect that has been discussed in relation to South America.

I am asked if I intend to support this motion. If Ronald Reagan was coming here in a personal capacity I certainly would not be supporting this motion, but he comes as President of the United States. Some of those Senators who are opposing this motion are guilty to a certain extent of the kind of attitude and fault which they are criticising in Reagan himself. What they are saying is they do not like the President that the people of the United States have elected. They are saying, in effect, they do not like that particular President but if they sent us a different kind of President, then we would probably give him a warm welcome. It is not for us to decide who should be President of the United States. It is not for us to interfere saying that we want to get rid of that man and put another man in his place. This is what President Reagan is doing in South America. This is the undemocratic attitude that he is taking, saying who should be in power in certain countries and who should not. In a sense the Senators who oppose this motion are saying they do not like the US President. They would like to get rid of him and impose a different kind of President on the people of the United States.

He is the President of the United States and in considering this motion we have to bear that in mind. The country of which he is President is a country with which we have innumerable bonds; there are 30 million or 40 million people of Irish origin there and it is a country with which we have many interests in common. It is fair to say that what we have in common is far more fundamental and durable than the differences which we have been discussing here this evening. The fact remains, as I has said, that he is the President of the United States. He has been elected by the people of the United States and he is coming here in that capacity. He has been invited here and must be given the normal courtesies. Whether this is a courtesy that he should be given is perhaps a matter for discussion and a matter of doubt, but it is true that heads of State from this country have been given that courtesy when they were in the United States. It would be very difficult for us to do anything less in his case.

It must be borne in mind that we are very conscious of what is happening in South America. We are very conscious of the nuclear build-up. Perhaps these will pass away, hopefully they will. The subtlety of our views on these policies which have been expressed here today will be entirely lost on the vast majority of the people in the US. In years to come when Reagan is gone and when perhaps hopefully these differences are gone——

An Leas-Cheann Chathaoirleach

I corrected a Senator this afternoon about this. The Senator should refer to him as President Reagan.

When the present President is gone what would be remembered is that we snubbed the President of the United States and the reasons for it would probably be forgotten. We cannot indulge ourselves in this kind of protest for reasons, as I have said, which will probably be forgotten when the snub and the discourtesy — if you like to call it that — will be clearly remembered. In all the circumstances and in spite of very serious reservations, support this motion but, with very little enthusiasm.

We should look on this visit as a visit of the head of a friendly nation to this country. It is a nation which we regard as our greatest friend among the nations of the world. On that account we should show respect to this invited guest. It is part of our nature to show respect to people we invite. We regard it as the essence of bad manners to cause them annoyance or embarrassment not to mention insulting them.

Tens of thousands of Irish born people in the United States, whether they voted for the present President or not, regard him as the President of a country which gave them a living and which they are happy to live in. Millions of people of Irish descent, while they are proud of their Irish ancestry, are equally proud of their American citizenship. They respect the President of the United States whether they are supporters of the Republican Party or of the Democratic Party. While the President holds the office, he is looked upon with respect. This is proper behaviour in any democracy. In a democracy, when the head of Government is elected, people who voted against him and worked against his election should honour and respect him while he holds the office. This is what the Irish people should do.

One has to bear in mind that the President of the United States was invited here. He did not impose his will on us. The Taoiseach went to the United States in March 1984 and was received with dignity, honour and courtesy and prior to that his predecessor was also received in the same way. It is incumbent on us to have the same sort of civilised attitude on this occasion.

Much has been said about American foreign policy. In the world today there are two super powers, each determined not to give a footing to the other in the countries bordering on them. In eastern Europe there are many countries that are under one of these super powers. The United States are similarly engaged and are determined not to let the other super power get close to them. That goes back to the days when President Kennedy had to take instant action in the case of Cuba. It is contended by the United States that the other super power has agents in Nicaragua, El Salvador and so on. I do not approve of the measures taken by America to protect their border. To a lesser degree they are doing what the other super power are doing.

In November the American people will be afforded an opportunity to express a view on whether they favour that policy or not. The indications are that the majority of the people think that President Reagan is a good President. In the case of the other super power, that opportunity will not be afforded to their people at any time. When they hold their mock elections all the candidates on the ballot paper belong to the one party. If we are conferring a signal honour on President Reagan it is because he is the head of the great super power that champions the democratic system. It is good for mankind that the United States is a super power. If it was not we would all be enslaved by the other one.

If the people of Nicaragua and El Salvador have just cause to complain against what is being done there by the CIA and American agents, their grievances are not as serious as those of the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians and other peoples of Eastern Europe. If this matter were put to the Irish people by way of referendum there would be an overwhelming support for giving a courteous reception to President Reagan, because the people of Ireland regard the United States as a most friendly country. It is not part of the make up of the Irish to invite a guest and then embarrass and insult him. For that reason I am supporting this motion. I will deem it an honour to be present in the other chamber on 4 June when President Reagan addresses both Houses.

I should like to comment on some of the points made in the earlier contributions. I am sorry that the Senators who made them are not here. I do not make them in a contentious sense but hopefully in the spirit of contributing to a greater understanding of the issues involved. As regards this visit and the motion before us many people find themselves in an uncomfortable position. They are, understandably, seeking to arrive at outcomes which best fit their own circumstances. That is totally valid in a democratic context. It is equally valid that other people adopting a different perspective should similarly be able to advocate their viewpoints.

Senator McGuinness said she did not think there was any substance in the view that US investment in Ireland could be affected by our attitude towards the political head of that country, in other words, the way in which we might treat President Reagan during his visit. Over the years, not only in a political context but in a more general business context, I have had a number of dealings with American businessmen at various levels. I know from a more general context that whether it is Ireland or any other country one of the factors which businessmen take very carefully into account in arriving at any major investment decisions overseas is the political climate within which they would have to operate. While I am not suggesting that American businessmen will rush away from Ireland if we were discourteous to President Reagan, the general climate of political thought, behaviour and the specific actions relating to American personnel and interests would be taken into account and would enter into the calculations of major corporations.

I do not wish to be misunderstood on this point. I am not making it in order to use that as a basis for justifying support for President Reagan's visit. I do not wish to make that case for the same reason that I do not wish to make the case that we should oppose his visit on the grounds that we dislike some or all of his foreign policy. I want to avoid those positions if at all possible. People who want to oppose his visit should not indulge themselves in the luxury of a selective interpretation of viewpoints. From my experience, it would be wrong to say that the political climate and political factors do not enter into investment decisions by American businessmen. They most certainly do. It would be very foolish on the part of major corporations to ignore them. Anyone who is interested in that aspect should take that point into account.

Senator Higgins made a point about the attitude of the Irish in America, our historical relationships and so on. He said two things. First of all, historically, the Irish who emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century were downtrodden, oppressed and so on and they never supported the Republican Party. Coming to more modern times, they did not vote for President Reagan and would be unlikely to vote for him this time. I will come back to the contemporary position in a moment.

It takes a rather specialist version of history to produce only the viewpoint Senator Higgins produced. I suggest that it would be better not to inquire into all the political positions adopted by Irish people or people of Irish extraction in the nineteenth century in the United States; there are some of which we would not be particularly proud, whether we are talking about pre-US Civil War or post-US Civil War. It would be better to ignore the historical context if at all possible, and perhaps we can entertain ourselves on another occasion with it.

Coming up to the contemporary position, the point I want to make is that I find myself rather puzzled by Senator Higgins' contribution on this aspect. If I understood him correctly, he said that to the best of his knowledge, and from contacts and so on, the Irish people or the people of Irish extraction in the United States did not vote for President Reagan or would not be supporting him. If they do not support him, or are not going to support him, what difference does it make if he is apparently received warmly by us? By definition the Irish Americans are not going to vote for him. I want to disagree with the Senator about the manner in which Irish Americans vote but if that were the position, I do not see why we should be so concerned about the voting reaction in America to his reception in Ireland if the Irish Americans were not going to support him.

They could be invited to.

In a democracy every candidate in an election will invite every voter to come out and support him, but that is a somewhat different point, I am sure the Senator will agree. That brings me to the other aspect. If individuals wish to use the material or content of the visit to promote some particular interest or policies of their own, so be it, but so far as the general publicity in the first week of June will be concerned, I am sure there will be television and other media coverage in the United States of President Reagan's stay in Ireland but the more substantial news item that week will be the economic summit which will be held from 5 to 8 June. This will get more coverage because the decisions of that summit are going to be of more relevance to the unemployed, the business people, the workers and so on, not only in the United States but in western Europe, Japan and elsewhere. Let us be realistic in terms of the media coverage, its impact, and what people will remember even two weeks after that visit much less five months later. The summit conference will be the news event, not that President Reagan stopped in Ireland for a few days. In so far as there will be any later media treatment, it will almost certainly arise in the political campaigning in the run up to the November election. Every candidate presumably will prepare whatever material he or she thinks appropriate for that purpose. The point being made is that we are assisting or promoting President Reagan's re-election campaign by inviting him to address both Houses. I will come back to that in a few moments.

The other point Senator Higgins raised, which is a very interesting one to which we should give attention, is the morality of the visit. The feeling was that if facilitating his visit or promoting his re-election prospects were in some sense contributing to the development of policies of which we disapprove, then we could not accept that on moral grounds. This is where I come to my own view on these matters. I asked myself two questions to help clarify my own attitude. The first was: if the President of the Soviet Union had been properly invited by the Irish Government of the day, and if he were invited to address the Joint Houses of the Oireachtas, would I wish to be present? I answered yes. If we had the opportunity of inviting people from Northern Ireland — Ian Paisley or anyone else you care to name, but people who do not share our views or who do not support many of the policies we might wish to espouse——

The Senator's comparisons are getting better.

Good. Again I would say, yes, I would want to do it. This is where I want to make specifically the moral point because Senator Higgins touched on the morality of the situation. My moral code derives from a Christian base; and I would ask myself: what was the basic teaching of Christ in these matters? I recall many phrases from the gospels, but the most relevant one says, "I come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance". He always made a point of being found among sinners. If you want to regard someone as a sinner in moral terms, you should be availing of the opportunity to meet and talk with him. You certainly should not try to walk away from or ignore him.

We are not offering him Confession but to address a joint session of the Houses of the Oireachtas.

If the House wants a specific example in the secular power — He specifically recognised the authority which had been vested in Pilate by his office. That is the point I want to come to now.

Senator McGuinness made the point, from her perspective I am sure correctly, that we were not inviting a titular Head of Government. The Americans do not have a president in the sense that we have President Hillery, or the West Germans have President Carstens. The President of the United States is very much a political office, if you like a partisan political office, and not a titular office over and above the cut and thrust of day-to-day political events. That is precisely why, in my opening remark, I said many people find themselves in an uncomfortable position. I am deliberately using the most neutral word I can think of. We did not write the Constitution of the United States. We did not say the titular head of that country would also occupy a political office. That was not our decision, it was the decision of the people of the United States. We cannot split the offices and say "Send us a titular president and we will welcome him, but do not send us the political officer or political Head of Government." We find ourselves in a situation where the President of the United States, properly elected by the people of the United States — and Senator Higgins may complain about the low poll but there are plenty democratic elections, as he well knows, which are decided by low polls, but I have never known one to be declared invalid on those grounds — and properly invited in accordance with diplomatic protocol by the Irish Government. Many people might prefer if he had not been invited, but once democratic decisions have been taken and the proper procedures have been followed, I do not see why we should gratuitously take it upon ourselves to seek to impose a majority or a minority view. If we assume that the elected representatives are broadly speaking representative of the people, I would take it that there is an overwhelming democratic majority for having President Reagan address the Joint Houses of the Oireachtas.

How does the Senator know?

I said if the public representatives are properly representative of the people. From what I have heard from speakers from the major political parties, it would seem that they support the motion. The invitation to President Reagan was extended not only by the present Taoiseach, but by the previous Taoiseach. Therefore it would seem that there is general support for his visit. In those circumstances I do not see why we should gratuitously snub the President, which is what we would be doing. I agree with what Senator Eoin Ryan said on that point. In years to come the people of the United States would not remember the rationale for the snub; they would remember the snub. They would remember that the President of the United States was gratuitously treated in a most discourteous manner, having being invited by the Irish Government of the day.

At this stage the proper course of action is to welcome President Reagan and to have him address the Houses of the Oireachtas. For that reason I will vote to support this motion. It might have been quite different if we had begun further back and in a different way, but that is not the situation in which we find ourselves. By having President Reagan address the Houses of the Oireachtas, I would not feel that I would in any sense be contributing to policies of which I did not approve, for precisely the moral reason I have advanced. The fact that Christ was found among sinners was not put forward as an argument that He was endorsing their policies or their behaviour — quite the contrary.

It was by the Pharisees.

If I had more time I would develop this argument. I want to make the basic point that if you want to introduce the moral argument that is it. If you want to summarise that approach in democratic terms, I have always taken the view that if you want to promote a peaceful outcome to conflict, you have to be prepared to talk to people, especially those with whom you fundamentally disagree. There is not much point in wasting time talking to people with whom you agree because——

We are not talking with him; he is talking to us.

The Senator is taking the particular few moments of time which will be occupied by the address to the Houses of the Oireachtas, but if the Senator takes it in the context of the generalised diplomatic and political procedure, which I understand him to be doing because he is linking his case against welcoming him to responses to his foreign policy; and is looking at it as one activity in a more general continuing series of political and diplomatic events, and if he wants to have some influence on the behaviour of the United States and the conduct of their foreign policy, he will have to be prepared to go out, avail of opportunities, build up contacts and develop friendships so that he can get to the point where in friendship he can say, "I do not agree with you", or "I do not like what you are doing". But I do not see how anyone can ever hope to attain that degree of influence or friendship if he or she develops a more standoff or more hostile attitude towards their guest, and in this context, not just the immediate guest, but the continuing consequences this might have on future relationships in this area.

I do not want to get into the question of who has special relationships with the United States and if the special relationships of one country are more significant than the special relationships of another. Even in the period of time which has elapsed from the previous visits of American Presidents, whether President Kennedy or President Nixon, we have seen ups and downs in the degree of contact, the degree of understanding, the degree of support which we may have received on occasion from the United States, and the degree of support which we may have accorded to some of their policies. I recall that around the time of President Nixon's visit, the live issue was whether mainland China should be admitted to the United Nations. At that stage the United States were opposed to that policy but we were supporting it. At that time we were running contrary to the then——

He was not invited to address the Houses of the Oireachtas.

I did not say he was. I am giving an illustration, if the Senator was listening to my remarks. I was saying that over a period of time one's relationships with a country may wax and wane. They do not remain static. If they are to have any meaning or content, they have to be pursued actively, developed, worked on and so forth. I am making the point that about the time of President Nixon's visit we were taking a different view to the United States on what was one of the important foreign policy issues of the day. I wanted to point out that within a short span of a couple of years we saw the turn around, and reached the stage where President Nixon was visiting mainland China and was being welcomed——

The Senator should not encourage interruptions.

I am wondering should the Chinese have snubbed President Nixon? I want to advocate my viewpoint; if you are seriously interested in trying to produce peaceful solutions to international differences of opinion, to areas of potential conflict, there is an overwhelming case to be made for going through with a proper invitation in the friendliest possible way and at later dates if necessary using the opportunities to build up and continue to develop your relationships to the point when you can exercise some degree of influence on the future conduct of policy of a friendly power. If you distance yourself, by definition you gradually diminish and weaken your influence. On the merits and on the logic of the arguments put before us today, I have no difficulty in supporting the motion that President Reagan be invited to address the Houses of the Oireachtas.

We are talking about the head of a friendly nation. We are not being unfriendly. It is a nice thing, and a wise thing, to advise a friend that he or she may be doing the wrong thing. That is a friend indeed. There is no sense in an argument being made that because a certain section of both Houses do not believe in the foreign policy of the American Administration, and say so, that there is anything unmannerly about that. Of course, he has been invited as President of America; of course, he will come here, but it would be dishonest and hypocritical if nobody in Ireland raised his or her voice about the foreign policy especially in Central America, leaving the nuclear missiles out of it for the moment.

Intervention and interference in democratically elected governments are not on, even with the power the Americans have. The American people have been most unfortunate. They have backed some of the most reactionary régimes since the end of the Second World War. Mark this and mark it well: they will not stem communism by military means. That is what they are afraid of and they have an obsession about it. They will only stem communism by supporting progressive-thinking regimes, by aiding them financially, by helping them in technical and technological matters, by giving education and training motivation to the poor and oppressed wherever they find them. That is the way communism will be stemmed, not the American way. The American way is wrong-headed, and I will repeat that it would be dishonest and hypocritical if those of us who are opposing the motion — and I am one — did not say something about these matters. It is not as simple as Senator O'Donoghue tried to make out — a question of policy. It is a question of human rights, plus unwarranted interference in the affairs of democratically elected governments. That is the issue.

Senator Ryan misinterpreted the views of the people who opposed the motion. He said that we would be satisfied if another person came as President. Such nonsense. If another person was President and came with the same policies, we would be bound to be consistent and do what we are doing tonight. That is a different interpretation, and that is the proper one. Senator Eoin Ryan was wrong and wrong-headed. It is policy we are against, not President Reagan as a person, what the Americans are doing in other countries in order to stem communism. There is no Communist state in Nicaragua; there are progressive Socialists in that country and what they are trying to do should be seen. Many Americans will not support the President's policies. I was speaking with them in Washington and New York last August. A number of American trade unions are fairly disillusioned about what he is doing in their names, but they cannot do very much about it. The idea that he is coming to Ireland to get votes from Irish-Americans is politics. If he can con the Irish-Americans like that, let him do it — that is politics. I could not care less whether the Irish-Americans vote for him. I would not point at that feature of it.

As regards the armaments race, I have come to the conclusion that the President of America is veering very close to warmongering. I can tell from my visit to Russia that the Russian people and the Russian Government are desperately in fear of America, and after America, Germany. This is real fear. If war breaks out on the basis of fear, American fear placed alongside Russian fear, there will be a holocaust. President Reagan is more capable of making mistakes than the Russians. That is my opinion and I could be terribly wrong. He is drawing the sabre far out of the scabbard, and that is a dangerous exercise.

There is desperate poverty in Central America. It is awful to think or read about it, to see it on television, to think about illiteracy and see these poor, oppressed people living under regimes that are trying to correct the present situation while the Americans are giving financial aid to underground movements. Who does not believe that Allende was assassinated with American influence? I listened to his widow four days after the assassination. She played a tape of his last words. He did not mention the Americans, but she did. She blamed the Americans for the assassination of a democratically elected head of Chile, Allende. That is why I am opposing this motion and these are the basic reasons why other people are opposing it also. Not to put a gloss on it, President Reagan will come, he will attend all the functions laid on for him, he will get the honour and we will be swamped. Nevertheless what we are saying tonight had to be said and I am pleased to be able to say it in the Seanad.

Cuirim fáilte roimh an rún seo agus tá súil agam go gcuirfear fáilte roimh Uachtarán na Stáit Aontaithe nuair a thiocfaidh sé freisin. I was pleasantly surprised, and maybe I should say disappointed, that Senator O'Donoghue stole my script, although he is sitting on the opposite side. Like others, I do not want to delay the debate tonight because it is late. I will not go over everything he said but I will try to keep to the points I was going to make before he stood up.

If we have officially invited the President of the United States we should welcome him properly. I see no ifs or buts about it. If he had not been invited it would be a different matter, but he has been and we should give him the honour that is due to him. Our Taoiseach was invited over to the United States and he addressed both Houses. Senator Robinson asked if there was any reason why President Reagan should be asked to address our two Houses. America is much more important than Ireland whether we like it or not, and it was a tremendous honour that the Taoiseach was asked to address their two Houses. Even if we return that compliment we will not be paying America the same honour they paid to us. I have no worries as to why we should reciprocate that honour. The Taoiseach and Minister for Foreign Affairs can express very clearly the reservations we may have on American policy. It is not for us to dictate with placards in Irish or English around the countryside because they will not have any great effect. The standing of our Taoiseach and of our Ministers will have much more effect, and I would leave it to them to do exactly what should be done in any democracy.

I cannot resist repeating some of the points Senator O'Donoghue mentioned. He mentioned the illogicality of what Senator Michael Higgins said about the re-election of the President. I do not know if he was carried away with the eloquence of his verbosity, but it was most illogical to outline the 27 per cent support he said the President got, that the Irish never supported that party and that by coming to Ireland they were going to throw their weight behind him. Apart from being illogical, that was a gross insult to the intelligence of Irish people and people of Irish descent in America that they would be conned into voting for a President who visited the old sod for the sake of sentiment. It was unsuitable for a man of Senator Higgins's intelligence to go on with that kind of nonsense.

Senator Ryan was extremely worried about the gold taps that were put on for the American visitors. So am I concerned, but my concern is that the Americans will not turn on the taps and leave the dollars behind.

Someone made the point that English tourists are in the majority at the moment but would it not be far better if we could bring in thousands of Americans if our Irish weather obliges by giving us a great selling point and if the American President gets the welcome he deserves. It would be marvellous to see them coming in, turning on gold taps and leaving dollars behind them.

The whole question of industry has been raised. This is a serious consideration in an economy in which there is so much unemployment. I am becoming tired of people who talk about profit, who decry profit and say that the Americans are coming here simply to make profit. Is there any nation or are there industrial people anywhere in the world who will come in and build factories here for a sentimental reason? So far as I am concerned they are very welcome to come in and set up factories that will make profit but which in the meantime will be providing employment for our people. It is not enough to be just simply talking about them being here for profit motives. They are welcome. There are no fools left in the world nowadays. This nonsense will not get us very far either.

The whole question of tourism is vital to our input here from the economy. If our tourist industry fails, we lose a lot of money. We are losing an advantage that could do a lot for our unemployed and for setting up industry all over the country. I would hope that nothing would be done to discourage anybody from coming here because of their being led to believe that we are not a friendly nation. Peaceful protest is one matter but there is always the danger that we will once again disgrace ourselves. It may not happen and genuine people may not want it to happen but there is that danger.

Attacking America about the nuclear arms race is fine but I am not too sure whether I am safer with America and Russia with nuclear weapons looking at one another or whether I would be safer if America dumped all her nuclear weapons and then said to Russia: "Now, we have dumped our nuclear weapons; would you throw away yours?" It is a catch-22 situation. It is so difficult and so dangerous that it is not fair to ask America to dump her nuclear weapons. Perhaps each nation will deter the other. Maybe they will not and we will all be blown up, but I would not be any easier if I thought that only Russia had nuclear weapons.

Statistics have been quoted today to prove the baddie that America is. I am not defending America but I have not seen statistics for the tanks that moved into Hungary nor have we statistics for Afghanistan. I hear people quoting the churches and publicly saying that they are against them, but I do not know if the churches in Russia are doing very well. We can be very selective in what we pick out to be the flaws in another democracy. I could probably go on for a long time saying a lot more but it has been said already. In fairness to those who have been sitting here since 6.30 p.m. and who want to contribute I will conclude by saying I welcome the visit of the President of the United States. I hope it will bring success to us because I do not see it doing that much good to him.

I am one of the many Irish people who view the forthcoming visit with mixed feelings. On the one hand we have a natural pride in welcoming the leader of a major democratic nation. On the other hand those of us who have made it our business to inform ourselves on issues of American foreign policy have certain profound reservations about aspects of this visit.

In common with the vast majority of Irish people, with whom I identify, I have affection for the United States of America. I am for the ideals of freedom, democracy, liberty and justice, all which that nation embodies. It is precisely because I am pro-America that I have viewed with growing dismay and with mounting concern the erratic and indeed crude foreign policy which is being pursued by the Reagan administration. I have made no secret of my opposition to this foreign policy. I have spoken vehemently in this House on these matters when occasions to do so were presented to me. It must be said that millions of Americans are opposed also to this foreign policy and that a majority of the United States Senate refused to endorse the proposal to mine the ports of Nicaragua.

Therefore, it was with a great sense of relief that I heard the Taoiseach's firm statement in the other House this afternoon that the Government will take advantage of the occasion of the visit of President Reagan to express to him the concern felt by many Irish people about aspects of the United States foreign policy in Central America. It is my hope that this concern will be communicated publicly.

I am heartened also to learn that the Government will be conveying concern that the negotiations on intermediate and strategic nuclear forces should resume and should do so with the genuine and manifest aim of succeeding, thereby bringing about substantial reductions in nuclear weapons and conventional forces to the lowest possible level. These are good things and impressions that have been created that the visit would be skated over and that these issues would not be raised have been clarified. It is both heartening and gratifying to learn that these matters will be raised by the Taoiseach on the occasion of the visit.

I propose to confine my remarks to the issue of the right to peaceful protest in this country, We are a modern independent State. We are not a dependent State. We may be dependent economically but our foreign policy and our position of neutrality and our wish to speak out with commitment, conviction and authority in areas where we are concerned should never be in question. Our views might not be popular but our autonomy and our authority to voice them are without question. It should never be dismissed.

It is our duty and indeed our moral obligation to speak out. Those who protest peacefully, and I emphasise peacefully, are helping to promote our national self-respect. They are exercising their right in our democracy. We have traditions of courtesy and hospitality. The visit of President Reagan to this country and his address to both Houses of the Oireachtas are a fait accompli. This debate on the resolution is largely academic. The invitations have been extended and accepted. The itinerary of the visit to the minute timescale has been published certainly in The Irish Times.

All of this has been in advance of the debate on the resolution before us. To oppose it at this stage, from my point of view, was never my intention. I want to make my position clear in common with many Irish people who view United States foreign policy with apprehension, who are appalled with the heightened tension which they see in the area of nuclear arms. Only last night we had another manifestation from the Soviets who intend locating more missiles in Eastern Europe. It is important that those who wish to protest in a courteous, dignified and restrained manner should be allowed to do so without insinuation or allegation that they are jumping on a band-wagon or belonging to the trendy Left. I think that sincerity and integrity should be without question. It may be a minority point of view but why should any of us be afraid of holding a minority point of view?

I should like to invite the President of the United States as the President of the United States. He was invited here by the Government and that invitation has been accepted. Are we now talking about insulting the President of the United States? As Senator O'Donoghue said, while this visit would be forgotten in a matter of weeks or months, the snub would never be forgotten.

The first question that bothers me is — I listened to all the speeches and I still have not got the answer I was expecting — if, at the next Presidential election, President Reagan is not re-elected and that there is some other President elected, will the policy in America be changed by that election?

The second point is that recently our Taoiseach addressed both Houses of Congress in America. Previously we had the former Taoiseach, Deputy Haughey, address both Houses of Congress and prior to that Mr. Cosgrave as Taoiseach addressed both Houses. All three were given a warm welcome. The Irish people would not have wished any group to have been prevented from making peaceful protest if they had so wished. I would not be a democrat if I did not go along with the concept of minorities having the right to protest. They have, but they have not a right to insult somebody who has been invited by the State, and say that he should not be here.

I would have thought that the most practical way for Senator Michael Higgins to protest would be to go to the other House the day the President is there when he would have an opportunity of chatting with the President and making his views known to him. That would be a lot more effective than all the banner waving.

This is the kindest wish on behalf of the Senator but he knows that it is not possible.

I believe it is possible and I believe the only way it is possible is by Senator Higgins being there.

Senator Daly is not aware of whether Senator Higgins will attend.

If he does not attend he will not be in a position to communicate, but if he does attend he has some chance of communicating with President Reagan.

I went to Washington to make my views known.

The Senator could have saved himself that trip to Washington. It is said that it is a long way to Tipperary but it is a much shorter journey from Galway to Dublin than a journey all the way to Washington. I could not see the sense in that at all. If he failed to meet the President in Dublin, maybe then he would find it necessary to go to Washington.

On a more serious note, we in this country are dependent on America for the industries that they have put into this country. We are in the technological age. We are in the microchip age. Their factories are here. They are highly successful. They are employing our people. Those people in the old days would have gone to America or to other countries but there is no room in any country today for emigrants so we should be very happy that the Americans are coming over here investing in the country, believing in the country. If one were to visit any of those factories in Galway or Shannon, for instance, and told the people down there that they were going to lose their jobs because of these protests, they would not be very happy about it.

Tourism is our second greatest industry after agriculture. Many people depend on this industry and on the spin-offs from it. There is a spin-off to be got from the visit of President Reagan but we must extend to him the hospitality that we are world famous for. The advantage to be had in this way will go a long way towards overcoming our financial troubles whereas we will only be in more financial trouble if we insult the President of the US, in other words, if we bite the hand that is feeding us. It would be a bad day if the President of the United States did not get the welcome that is traditional in Irish hospitality.

It is only right that after this long and interesting debate that I should spend a couple of minutes in reply to some of the points that have been raised. Firstly, I would like to take up the point made by Senator Robinson. She said that there was an onus on those who were moving the motion to single out the phrase "signal honour" and to indicate why there should be this signal honour on this occasion. She suggested that it was not in accordance with the full precedent that the President of the United States should be honoured in this way, referring to the visit of President Nixon in October 1970. I want to state quite specifically that the visit of President and Mrs. Nixon on that occasion cannot be properly compared to the visit of President John Kennedy in 1963 or the proposed visit we are discussing tonight. President Nixon did visit this country as President. He spent 48 hours in this country as President but less than six of those 48 hours constitutes a State visit. The remainder of the visit was a private visit. You cannot compare that visit to the full visit that was made by President John Kennedy in 1963 or the full visit that is proposed by President Reagan in 1984.

Secondly I would like to make the point briefly that there is a long tradition of association between our two countries and I want to join with Senator O'Donoghue in criticising the historical portion of Senator Michael Higgins' speech. Senator Higgins concentrates on one period in Irish history. He talked of those who went in 1845-49. I said that the association went over two centuries. Let us give credit to those, mainly Ulster-Irish, who contributed in the early years in the United States. They are part of Ireland and I claim them as part of the association. If we look at those who contributed to the American Independence Movement we find many Irish there. Look at the muster yells of Washington's army and the Irish were there fighting for American Independence.

I am proud that through my mother's family I am related to Charles Carroll of Carrollton who was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence. Senator Higgins suggested that the Republican Party had never been the party of the Irish and indeed that it had never been the party of liberty. This was implicit in his remarks. I want to say that if we had had an Oireachtas and I was a Member of it at the time of Abe Lincoln I would have voted heartily for him to be invited here and for him to have addressed both Houses of the Oireachtas. I do not agree with Senator Michael Higgins either that the Irish-Americans of today are either solidly democratic or are lovers of liberty and defenders of the oppressed. I think if you do talk, over all the strata of society in the United States, to the American Irish I am afraid that you will find many aspects in which we would all disagree with them on the points that we have been talking about tonight.

I do not dispute that — there is a limit to their fundamentalism.

The main concern tonight in this debate has been with foreign policy. There is no doubt the personal advisers of the American President who will read the debate today in Seanad Éireann to see what is in it will get from our debate tonight a good uniform opinion of what the Members of Seanad Éireann think about US foreign policy. That is a good thing. Senator Michael Higgins said that we cannot change that policy by statements during the visit of President Reagan, that we cannot change in this way American foreign policy. We cannot change it either by empty seats or by street demonstrations. I agree with those Senators who said that what is proposed here in regard to this visit and what is proposed to be done by the leaders of all our parties here is to take part in a slow, gradual process but leaving the President and members of the President's party in no doubt of our views. I do not think I should go any further, but I do want to say that if we do take the precedent, if we do take the long history of our varied relationships with the United States, if we do take the fact that nobody can have any doubt about our reservations in regard to American policy, having taken all those into account the proper thing for us to do in this House tonight is to pass this motion and to welcome the President when he addresses the Joint Houses of the Oireachtas on 4 June.

Question put.
The Seanad divided: Tá, 32; Níl, 8.

  • Belton, Luke.
  • Browne, John.
  • Connor, John.
  • Daly, Jack.
  • de Brún, Séamus.
  • Dooge, James C.I.
  • Hanafin, Des.
  • Higgins, Jim.
  • Hillery, Brian.
  • Honan, Tras.
  • Hourigan, Richard V.
  • Howard, Michael.
  • Kelleher, Peter.
  • Killilea, Mark.
  • Lanigan, Mick.
  • Lennon, Joseph.
  • Durcan, Patrick.
  • Ellis, John.
  • Fallon, Sean.
  • Ferris, Michael.
  • FitzGerald, Alexis J.G.
  • Fitzsimons, Jack.
  • Lynch, Michael.
  • McDonald, Charlie.
  • McMahon, Larry.
  • Mullooly, Brian.
  • O'Brien, Andy.
  • O'Donoghue, Martin.
  • O'Toole, Martin J.
  • Ryan, Eoin.
  • Ryan, William.
  • Smith, Michael.

Níl

  • Conway, Timmy.
  • Higgins, Michael D.
  • Howlin, Brendan.
  • McAuliffe-Ennis,
  • Helena.
  • McGonagle, Stephen.
  • McGuinness,
  • Catherine I.B.
  • Robinson, Mary T.W.
  • Ryan, Brendan.
Tellers: Tá: Senators Belton and Ferris; Níl: Senators Howlin and McAuliffe-Ennis.
Question declared carried.
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