Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This section amends section 104 of the Finance Act 2001 to align Irish excise legislation with the provisions of the EU general excise directive. This directive requires member states to apply a relief to excisable products that are supplied to the armed forces of any state which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty other than the armed forces of the EU state within which the excise duty is chargeable. It also requires that a similar relief be applied, with effect from 1 July 2022, to forces of member states undertaking a common defence effort under the European Union’s common security and defence policy, other than the armed forces of the EU state within which the excise duty is chargeable. This amendment is therefore necessary to transpose relevant provisions of the general excise directive into Irish legislation.

In response to the point made by Deputy Mairéad Farrell, it is important to note that the provisions of the general excise directive that are being transposed are already applicable in Ireland as the directive is directly applicable to Irish law in this regard. This does not arise as an issue in Ireland because the provisions only apply to the delivery of excisable products within a member state intended to be used by the armed forces of another member state or their accompanying civilian staff.

As there is no change to the constitutional provisions relating to armed forces, which effectively prohibits foreign forces being based or maintained within the State, I do not expect these excise provisions to change anything. To be very clear, in order for this to be a charge on the State it would require foreign forces to be present here in such a way that they can claim this excise relief. As the Green Party, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are very clear in standing over the constitutional provisions on neutrality this is not a matter that will occur. The longstanding foreign policy priority of protecting the neutrality of our country is utterly unchanged by this. This section is the transposition of something that is a general excise directive and it in no way affects our commitment to our provisions on our neutrality.

On Deputy Farrell's point, because of our standing over our neutrality I cannot see any circumstances in which this would protect or create a charge within our jurisdiction. Deputy Barry's concerns around European security sovereignty and developing a defence capability for the European Union are indeed worthy of debate but they are not affected by the passage of this section.