Ms Niamh N? Bhriain:

The reason I quoted Article 41.2 is because we have to begin from there. If there are situations where you make exceptions, those exceptions then become the norm and the European Union ends up normalising the contribution of public money to private armament companies for the production of weapons. I am not aware of any other scrutiny committee. I checked with colleagues in other research organisations across Europe. I have not heard that there have been any scrutiny committees in any other European countries. So much of this goes under the radar. We have to anchor what we are doing to Article 41.2 and raise serious concerns about the fact that it raises a red flag on whether the ASAP regulation breaches it. We can row back from there and look at what happened to the €600 million relating to the pilot projects and the €8 billion relating to the European Defence Fund. There are also the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the European external action service and the fact that we have military mandated missions operating in countries throughout Africa. A great deal emanates from Article 41.2. Even if a legal analysis is carried out and the lawyers tell us that Article 41.2 is above the law, I am of the view that Ireland has an obligation to ask whether it is above Irish law.

Going back to cluster munitions -----