Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:

The Deputy has made a distinction between contributing militarily and contributing financially. I do not think Ireland should be participating in any way, shape or form militarily, financially or otherwise. Our public resources should be going to the better good of the people. We just heard some discussion on the impact of climate. As I said, I am from County Clare. We have no functioning hospital in Ennis. We have to go into Limerick and if you go into Limerick hospital you are in big trouble because it is overworked and under-resourced. If we are coming at this from a financial point of view, there is no logic that should see Ireland contributing. For example, Ireland puts money into a pot and that money is used to buy lethal weapons. There are two categories under SAFE. There is ammunition, electronic warfare, AI warfare and defence missiles systems. Why would we want to invest our financial resources in weapons of death? If they are not used in Ireland, which we certainly hope they will not be, they will then be exported to create and prolong wars in other places.

This is not about defence; this is about war-making and war-fighting and the massive profits that are made in war.

In terms of the backstop, the way the loans are acquired is that the European Commission raises capital on the international markets. It acquires funds. There are at the moment 19 countries that have submitted requests for the weaponry that will be funded under this. They are now preparing their national investment plans, and those have to be submitted by November. The Council will then sign off on those and they will be adopted in January. Once that happens, the money will start flowing. It will be funnelled through the European Commission to the member states. The loans will be taken out by the member states, but the backstop is against the European Union's public budget. Poland is the country that has sought the most money here. If Poland were to default on a loan, for example, that would fall to the European Commission then to figure out how to repay that. Ireland, as a net contributor to the European Union, would necessarily then have to cough up. This is €150 billion worth of money which is not legally sound. Even the Parliament agrees with that. The Parliament has said that it does not have a problem with the substance; it has a problem with the legality. We are getting into really dangerous territory. Like I said, I was here 18 months ago, we were discussing €500 million and we were really concerned at that point that the European Union had broken its own rules to allow for €500 million to be spent on ammunition, something which is prohibited under EU law. Here we are again with €150 billion. At what point is enough enough? That is what I am worried about when we get into this logic of deterrence, that we need to constantly have more weapons to be able to stop an alleged aggressor.

The Deputy asks how we can use the instrument and says it would be useful. It would not be useful. It is about funding weapons of war. These will be used to kill people. The people who are starving to death in Gaza right now, engineered famine, are being starved to death under military occupation, and much of the weaponry that is being used to starve those people to death and to enforce that military occupation is coming through Irish airspace, potentially through Shannon Airport, and is coming from European Union member states. We have to be very clear. We are seeing the erosion of international law in Gaza and now we are seeing the erosion of EU law with these funds. If we allow what is happening in Gaza to be normalised, we are all fair game and anyone is next. I do not want to live in a world like that and I do not think anyone in this room does either.