Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)

I will just give a few points on where the money goes. There does not seem to be any condition around decarbonisation of the military. Will the witnesses comment on that? Decarbonisation or transparency in terms of military emissions is not being made a condition and there seem to be no attachments in terms of the climate concerns attached to it. Will that be confirmed?

There does not seem to be any risk assessment. We know we have history not so long ago of Austria, I think, having sent tanks to the border with Italy due to migrants transiting there. We do not really have a guarantee that these weapons will not be used in internally in Europe in the long term. Let us think of where these weapons will get used. We are in a situation where we are engaging large armies across Europe when we know we have had some very authoritarian governments come into power in Europe.

It is not clear if there has been a risk assessment in relation to that component. Have the questions of where they will be used externally, whether they might be used internally and whether they might be used against migrants on the border been assessed? Is there a danger? Are there any guarantees? Have they been assessed in terms of climate?

This is not just about weapons, but about the money in terms of who benefits. It might be outside our remit. We had very interesting written submissions on this. Economically, some of the submissions we have received give a very strong analysis of the fact that this is funnelling a huge amount of money directly from our cohesion funding and indirectly in terms of loans, which, by the way, are debts. We can be concerned about our underwriting of the loans, but they are also additional debt that will ultimately need to be repaid by the EU countries taking them on. The benefit seems to be going to very few countries, particularly Germany, but also France and perhaps Italy to an extent. Will Ms Ní Bhriain comment on where the large arms manufacturers are? A very interesting analysis I have seen is that this is effectively us massively underwriting those industries rather than, for example, investing in new green industries - Ms Kinney might come in on this - that would benefit the peripheries of Europe under the idea of a just transition. The EU will not just be taking money out of the just transition fund. In directing so much money into military manufacturing, which is centralised, we will effectively make less available for investment in new green industries, which many of us across Europe, including in countries like Ireland and others, would hope to be benefiting from.