Paul Gogarty (Dublin Mid West, Independent)

With an eye to our looming EU Presidency, I wish to see whether we can show leadership in certain areas of development support. I am thinking of two things. The first is the issue of arms getting to combat zones in Sudan. While I know there is an EU-wide ban, we have seen a situation reported fairly recently where Bulgarian mortars got into Sudan, although not directly. There have been claims of French and - outside the EU – British weapons getting in through intermediaries. A lot of them seem to be through the UAE, which has a number of companies referenced in some reports. Some kinds of factions in Libya are also helping. From the European Union perspective, given that our trade links with the UAE are developing, is any pressure being applied on our trade partner to stamp down on those sorts of arm shipments? I know the UAE is taking the side of the rebels, for example, and everyone has their own viewpoints. Russia, China and Iran are all involved in some way, shape or form. It is just to ensure that the EU element is enforced.

Separate to this is Afghanistan. The Taliban has brought in over 80 diktats, basically reducing women to nothing. They are not allowed to speak, educate themselves or do anything. I read an article in one of the Irish papers recently, as well as other reports elsewhere, about how women are circumventing some of the education elements, at huge personal risk, by going online. What concerns me is that if there is no culture of ongoing education among women, in ten years’ time, they will go back to “knowing their place” in society and there will not be that effort to ensure women’s education is kept to the forefront. Right now, it is to the forefront because people know and have experience of education. If the Taliban succeeds long term, however, then the next generation will not have that experience and it will be a lot more difficult to ensure that women’s fundamental rights are protected.

In that respect, in the Minister of State’s view, how feasible is it to have a project whereby a Starlink-type Internet access would be beamed by satellite into Afghanistan and devices would be sent into the country to allow women to learn online and to give them some sort of recognition of qualifications to international standards? It may not help them in the short term to secure employment in Afghanistan, but it will ensure that if they do manage to get out of the country, they have qualifications. It will also ensure that a culture of learning is continued because, obviously, the misogynists in the Taliban want to see women denigrated totally. They are halfway through that, unfortunately.