Before I begin, I want also to extend my condolences and those of Sinn Féin to the victims and the bereaved of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday evening last. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families today. Ba mhaith liom mo chomhbhrón a dhéanamh leo go léir.

On Sunday, millions of Catalans voted in a referendum on independence. They did so in the face of violent repression on the part of the Spanish state. A Sinn Féin delegation of Senators, Deputies and MEPs were in Catalonia as international observers along with others. They witnessed the coercion at first hand. Old people were assaulted as they tried to enter polling stations. The Spanish police fired plastic bullets into crowds of innocent people simply because they wanted to exercise their right to vote.

We should know only too well the horrific consequences of the use of plastic bullets by the British Army in recent years in our country. I want to commend the enormous courage of the Catalan people in their efforts to hold a peaceful referendum. That was a huge achievement in and of itself, organisationally and logistically. Families occupied polling stations and kept them open so that their fellow citizens could vote. Catalan fire fighters formed human shields to protect voters and farmers brought in their tractors to form barricades so that citizens could vote. These were not violent actions and they should not have been met with the violent response they received from the Spanish state. As the Taoiseach knows well, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament has been prosecuted for holding a debate and a vote in the Parliament on the issue of an independence referendum. The former president and two former ministers have also been prosecuted for organising a non-binding referendum on independence in 2014.

Fine Gael has a close connection with the government party in Spain and it is time for the Taoiseach to encourage dialogue. The international community, especially the European Union, has an obligation to ensure that Catalonia can pursue its course of self determination without fear of suppression. Our Government should be to the forefront in defending their right to decide their own future. What they decide is a secondary issue and is entirely a matter for themselves. The refusal to make this case is justified on the basis that these issues are an internal matter for the Spanish state but that is exactly the pretext that was used by the British state for decades to prevent the scrutiny of British rule in the North. It was only when these issues became internationalised that remedies emerged.

Will the Taoiseach stand up for the principles of democracy and the right to self determination for the people of Catalonia and will he use his influence and connections with the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr. Mariano Rajoy, to get him to accept mediation as part of the necessary process of talks between his Government and the Catalan people?

Ar dtús, fáilte ar ais a Ghearóid-----

Go raibh maith agat. Tá a fhios agat go bhfuil mé ag baint úsaide as script.

An-mhaith. Like Deputy Adams, everyone in this House and everyone in Ireland who watched the news on Sunday was horrified at the scenes we saw broadcast from Barcelona and Girona and to see that level of violence happening in what is a European country that has been a democracy since the 1970s. As I said on Monday, violence is never the solution to political disagreements. Violence by state actors, whether it is the police or the army, against unarmed civilians is disproportionate and should not have happened. It is also counterproductive. We know from our own history in this country and from history around the world that when policemen and soldiers use violence against unarmed civilians, it is counterproductive. It causes people to become more radicalised, causes greater nationalism and greater disunity. I hope the Spanish Government will reflect on the historical experiences of many countries in the world when it considers its next course of action into the future.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy that dialogue is the right way forward and that is what I would like to see occur in Spain. If I have the opportunity to say that to the Spanish Prime Minister in the weeks ahead, I will certainly take that opportunity.

There is a lot of agreement between us on this issue. The question now is what the Taoiseach is going to do about it. I welcome his commitment to raise this with Prime Minister Rajoy. The people of Spain are our allies. They are friends of Ireland but so too are the people of Catalonia. There are notable links between the Catalan and Irish independence movements. The Taoiseach may know that Terence McSwiney's hunger strike in 1920 inspired the independence movement there. When Terence McSwiney died, organisations from Catalonia wrote to the British Prime Minister condemning the treatment of the Cork mayor and there were mass demonstrations on the streets of Barcelona.

We are agreed that we need dialogue and mediation. We are agreed that, as the Taoiseach has outlined, when the State uses violence it leads to more division, disunity and radicalisation.

Will the Taoiseach pick up the telephone to Mr. Rajoy to tell him this? His party and that of Mr. Rajoy are sister members of the European People's Party group. Dialogue is what kick-started and sustains the peace process; therefore, I ask him to move on the very welcome statement he has made and raise these issues directly with the Spanish Prime Minister.

I absolutely agree that dialogue is required and that neither violence nor unilateralism is required. Contacts will be made at official level and, when the opportunity is appropriate, I will certainly discuss the matter with the Prime Minister, Mr. Rajoy. I have not yet had the chance to meet him on a one-to-one basis, but we have attended summits together, although he was not at the summit in Tallinn, presumably in anticipation of events that were unfolding in Catalonia.

There have been referendums on independence held in other countries and we are all familiar with the referendum in the United Kingdom on Scottish independence and the referendum in Canada on independence for Quebec. On both occasions the referendums happened in accordance with the law of the state. The referendum held in Scotland occurred under the laws of the United Kingdom, while the referendum held in Quebec occurred under the laws of Canada. The referendum in this instance was different in that it did not happen under Spanish law or within the constitutional legal framework of Spain. As a member state of the European Union, we respect the law, the constitution and the territorial integrity of Spain as another member state. If there is to be a referendum held in the future, as was the case in Scotland and Quebec, it should happen within the legal and constitutional framework of the country. Were that to happen, I imagine there would be a very high turnout and it would be considered to be democratically legitimate.