Address to Seanad Éireann by Members of the European Parliament
Seanad Éireann — 2021-11-02
============================================================

Eugene Murphy (FF), Agricultural Panel

I welcome the four MEPs. Their performance has been excellent. Mine is a different type of question. Richard O'Halloran is held against his will in a Chinese jail. His wife and family are going through torture. Robert Pether from Elphin in Roscommon, originally from Australia, is jailed in Iraq. His wife and family are going through absolute torture. I know the Pether family well. I have been representing them. Mr. Pether's wife, Desree McCarthy, is originally from Dublin.
I ask all four MEPs to think of those families this evening and to do everything they can to ensure that something is done for them at EU level. Their situation is so sad and desperate and I am hugely concerned for both families.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2021-11-02/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-11-02