Ireland accepts the word of US authorities over alleged torture flight claims, the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said today.
Opposition parties and human rights groups have claimed in recent months that terror suspects may be transported by the CIA through Shannon Airport on their way to interrogation camps in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is facing controversy on the issue as she visits Berlin, Bucharest, Kiev and Brussels on a tour of Europe.
The Taoiseach told the Dail today that the rendition of suspects was the primary reason his Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern sought a meeting with Ms Rice in Washington last week.
He said: "We cannot, and will not, in this country allow any aircraft to engage in what are known as 'extraordinary renditions', to land and refuel in any Irish airport. "Ireland has not, and will not, facilitate torture of prisoners by any state.
"Any use of torture wherever it occurs would be wrong and deeply reprehensible." Mr Ahern said that all possible government powers will be exercised to stop the US using any Irish facilities where there are substantial grounds for believing that there is torture of a prisoner.
He said the Government subscribed to the accepted international definition of torture but the state accepted the repeated assurances of the US authorities.
The Taoiseach claimed that no evidence existed of illegal practices but that any evidence uncovered should be passed on to the gardai. Labour leader Pat Rabbitte asked Mr Ahern what specific steps he had taken to investigate the issue, rather than accepting the assurances of US authorities.
Mr Ahern replied: "Having raised this issue repeatedly at the highest level, as late as last week, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, she has said this country has not, and will not, be used for this purpose. "If she gives us those assurances, I accept them."
The former president of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, called for individual countries to carry out investigations on the matter.
She added that it needed to be established how torture was defined both inside and outside the US. Information obtained by RTE under the Freedom of Information Act indicated that there may have been a total of 38 landings of CIA flights at Shannon Airport, mostly since 2002.
Earlier in the Dail, Mr Rabbitte spoke of the growing national and international concern at CIA aircraft landing in EU airports, including 50 landings at Shannon. Quoting a US Justice Department memo from 2002, Mr Rabbitte claimed torture had been redefined as involving "physical pain equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or death."
Mr Rabbitte said that Ireland was entitled to inspect the CIA aircraft as they land at Shannon Airport.