Ms Niamh N? Bhriain:

At the moment, European arms are being sent to Israel to be used in Gaza. The safeguards are not worth the paper they are written on. In terms of the regulations that are in place for the export of arms from the European Union, we have the EU Common Position from 2008, which contains eight criteria in line with which countries are to assess their exports. The second criterion of the eight relates to human rights and whether weaponry would be sent to a place where there is a conflict. The Common Position is, in theory, justiciable. If it is applied, it should, in theory, be able to stop problematic exports. However, there is no oversight as to how each country goes about implementing the Common Position. It is left up to each country and its own standards to look at how it implements the Common Position. We have no guarantees in that regard. Everything that is sent out of the European Union should be subject to an end user agreement but in the case, for example, of what we send to the US in terms of military licences, we have no idea whether the end user is, in fact, Israel. That is hugely problematic at the moment. The Netherlands sends weaponry and components of weaponry to the US that will end up in Israel through F-35s. It foregoes the need for an end user agreement.

I have one more thing to add on end users. A very problematic report came out of the UN a few years back. It showed that the military junta in Myanmar was mostly being armed by Ukraine. It was sending weaponry before the full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022. The weapons in Myanmar were coming from Ukraine. We have no guarantee that what we are sending to Ukraine will not end up in other wars and conflicts around the world. We have no guarantees or safeguards, and that is why exports of arms are so highly problematic.