Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 15 October 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach
Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals
2:00 am
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
It sounds like the safeguards relate to fraud and financial management. If the Commission becomes aware that the money disbursed through the loans is not being used to buy the weapons, these safeguards will kick in. It does not seem that there is any protection to ensure that these weapons, once purchased, cannot be misused. I am asking this from the point of view of the Irish public because the Irish public are underwriting these loans. It is in our interest. The Irish public will not want to underwrite loans for a government that has serious issues around the rule of law.
We already have that situation. In Hungary, for example, there are not the norms we expect in Ireland, such as rule of law and humans rights law norms, or treatment of the LGBTI community in the Hungarian Government banning pride marches and so forth. There are some very some serious issues and red flags there in terms of lack of basic respect for its own citizens. What protections or safeguards are there to ensure that we will not be underwriting a loan to a country in the European Union that does not respect the basic rights of some of its own citizens? What protections are there to ensure we will not be underwriting a loan to get more weapons in the hands of that government, which could be used and abused in ways that would not be acceptable to the Irish public? I appreciate there are financial management and fraud provisions but are there any safeguards for what I am asking about?
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