Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 24 September 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure, Public Service Reform and Digitalisation, and Taoiseach
EU Legislative Proposals: Discussion
2:00 am
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Tá leithscéalta faighte againn ón Teachta Ged Nash agus ón Teachta Timmins. Apologies have been received from Deputies Ged Nash and Edward Timmins and Senator Joe O'Reilly.
Is mian liom na riachtanaisí bunreachtúla seo a leanas a mheabhrú do chomhaltaí agus páirt á ghlacadh acu i gcruinnithe poiblí. Caithfidh comhaltaí a bheith i láthair go fisiciúil laistigh de theorainn Theach Laighean. Ní cheadóidh mé do chomhaltaí labhairt ag cruinnithe poiblí nuair nach bhfuil siad ag cloí leis an riachtanas bunreachtúil seo. Mar sin, má dhéanann aon chomhalta iarracht páirt a ghlacadh ó lasmuigh den suíomh, iarrfaidh mé orthu an cruinniú a fhágáil. Maidir leis seo, iarraim ar chomhaltaí a dheimhniú go bhfuil siad i láthair laistigh de phurláin Theach Laighean sula ndéanann siad aon ionchur ar an gcruinniú ar MS Teams. Fíoraítear do chomhaltaí cleachtadh Parlaiminte a urramú nár chóir más féidir daoine ná eintiteas a cháineadh ná líomhaintí a dhéanamh ina n-aghaidh ná tuairimí a thabhairt maidir leo ina ainm, ina hainm nó ina n-ainm ar shlí go bhféadfaí iad a aithint. Chomh maith leis sin, fiafraítear dóibh gan aon rud a rá a d'fhéadfaí breathnú air mar ábhar díobhálach do dhea-chlú aon duine nó eintiteas. Mar sin, dá bhféadfaí ráiteas a bheith clúmhillteach do dhuine nó eintiteas aitheanta, ordóidh mé don duine éirí as an ráiteas láithreach. Tá sé ríthábhachtach go ngéilleadh comhaltaí don ordú sin láithreach.
I advise members of the constitutional requirement that members must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex in order to participate in public meetings. I will not permit a member to participate where they are not adhering to this constitutional requirement. Therefore, a member who attempts to participate from outside the precincts will be asked to leave the meeting. In this regard, I ask any member partaking via Microsoft Teams that prior to making their contribution to the meeting, they confirm they are on the grounds of the Leinster House campus. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that might be regarded as damaging to the good name of the person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with any such direction.
The joint committee is meeting today to discuss two legislative proposals from the EU. The first of the proposals is COM (2025) 122, which is a proposal for a Council regulation establishing the security action for Europe, or SAFE, through the reinforcement of the European defence industry instrument. The Commission has presented the ReArm Europe Plan, or Readiness 2030, which is structured around five pillars. The SAFE regulation under discussion today represents one pillar of the plan and seeks to provide a new EU financial instrument to raise up to €150 billion in capital markets to support and accelerate national investments.
The second proposal under discussion today is COM (2025) 123, which is a regulation amending Regulations (EU) 2021/1058, European Regional Development Fund and the Cohesion Fund, and (EU) 2021/1056, the just transition fund, JTF, as regards specific measures to address strategic challenges in the context of the mid-term review. The EU's investment policy covers a range of programmes that seek to support job creation, competitiveness, economic growth, sustainability, sustainable development and improvements to quality of life. Cohesion policy is delivered through four specific funds, the European Regional Development Fund, ERDF, the Cohesion Fund, the European Social Fund Plus, ESF+, and the just transition fund.
The legal framework for the cohesion policy programmes provides for a mid-term review in 2025, allowing member states the option to redirect resources from the 2021-27 period towards investments in areas considered by the Commission as key priorities. To this end, the Commission has proposed targeted amendments that seek to use the mid-term review of cohesion policies to priorities of the Union. Specific objectives of the proposals include extension of the ERDF to large companies in areas such as defence, strategic technologies and decarbonisation. The regulation would also create two new specific objectives within the scope of the ERDF to support defence, with the first allowing for reprogramming of funds to enhance productive capacities in defence enterprises while enhancing the military mobility in the EU. A number of concerns arise with these regulations and upon initial considerations of these proposals, the joint committee opened a call for submissions from interested parties.
A large number of responses were received and among those submissions a common theme emerges with regard to concerns about the move towards directing funds to military and defence spending. Issues arise with regard to the interaction of these proposals with national legislation and Ireland's stance of military neutrality. Furthermore, there are environmental implications associated with increases in defence and military action and it is necessary to consider the potential impact of these regulations in the context of climate change and environmental needs.
In this context, I welcome to the meeting Ellie Kinney of the Conflict and Environment Observatory and Niamh Ní Bhriain of the Transnational Institute. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as teacht os comhair an choiste. I invite Ms Kinney to make her opening statement.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
I thank the Chair. Militaries are a highly polluting sector and as such every euro of military spending comes at a heavy cost to our climate. In 2019 it was estimated militaries and their supply chains were responsible for 5.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which is more than the emissions from international aviation and shipping sectors combined. That year global military spending was at $1.9 trillion but by 2024 it had reached a record $2.7 trillion. The proposal at the heart of today's discussion focuses on just a small fraction of this figure but the bigger picture is clear. If current trends persist global military spending could reach $6.6 trillion by 2035, which is nearly five times the level at the end of the Cold War and more than twice what was spent just last year.
There are uncertainties in tying together military spending with increases in greenhouse gas emissions. One key reason for this is military spending reporting to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, UNFCCC, is voluntary and as a result the data reported by governments is often patchy, incomplete or missing altogether. Most militaries have done little to map their supply chain emissions and the science of tracking emissions during armed conflicts is in its infancy. These exemptions, exclusions and omissions have consequences and slowed efforts to decarbonise militaries, created gaps in global climate predictions and in policy responses. This is what we call the military emissions gap. One recent analysis found an 82% gap between what EU militaries report to the UNFCCC and the likely true scale of their emissions.
Based on what we know, experts estimate that pledges to increasing military spending across NATO and EU states through the ReArm Europe Plan being discussed here would release up to 194 MtCO2eq each year. When we factor in how the additional heating from these emissions impacts societies and economies this equates to up to $264 billion per year in climate damage. This increase is driven by a range of factors. Ramping up military production to increase stockpiles is energy intensive and because limited progress has been made towards military decarbonisation the current procurement push means militaries will be locked into fossil fuel intensive equipment for decades. This means Europe’s militaries are committing to equipment today that will hinder tomorrow’s mitigation efforts well into our children’s futures. Simultaneously, the increased military spending is coming at the expense of spending on European climate action. Money is being diverted away from the Just Transition Fund’s original purpose. Money that was due to fund climate neutrality across the Union will now line the pockets of the arms industry in Europe and the US.
In theory, ReArm Europe is intended to protect and maintain Europe's safety and security, but by jeopardising efforts to mitigate the climate crisis and by weakening our capacity to adapt to climate impacts, the plan prioritises short term security at the expense of our collective long term security. While data on military emissions might be patchy, the research so far is clear that unconstrained military spending is incompatible with the EU’s commitment to reach net zero by 2050. It was only last month that the International Court of Justice advisory opinion on the obligation of states in respect to climate change found that states party to climate treaties, and the indeed the EU as a whole, must adopt measures required to fulfil the objectives of these treaties. ReArm Europe seems at odds with these obligations. In developing its ruling the International Court of Justice heard from the State of Palestine, the counsel for which drew attention to the impact armed conflicts and situations of occupation can have on emissions and on the opportunity for affected states to mitigate and adapt to climate change. We are only just beginning to document the emissions footprints of wars, but the data from Ukraine and from Gaza suggests they can generate emissions akin to the annual emissions of entire countries.
While the bulk of emissions associated with militaries comes from their routine activities such as training or procurement, we know that militarism begets militarised responses. In this respect there is also a risk spiralling military spending will make future conflicts more likely and in turn the emissions they generate and the climate action that they constrain. In an increasingly militarised Europe voices like Ireland's, Slovenia's and Spain's are vital for reminding us that genuine human security is not simply a function of military spending.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh míle maith agat as sin. I invite Ms Ní Bhriain to make her opening statement.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
I thank the committee for the invitation to discuss the Security Action for Europe instrument, or SAFE. During the previous Government in April 2024 I appeared before this committee when it examined the EU’s Act in Support of Ammunition Production, which was a €500 million fund enacted under apparently exceptional circumstances that saw EU institutions bypass normal legislative procedures. Here we are again 18 months later discussing yet another exceptional piece of EU legislation concerning not hundreds of millions but €150 billion, a sum that is 300 times larger.
SAFE is a "...financial instrument designed to provide financial support to Member States to speed up defence readiness by allowing urgent and major investments in support of the European defence industry...". It was enacted on 29 May without national parliaments or indeed the European Parliament being afforded the opportunity to scrutinise it. The loans have tentatively been allocated and applicant countries are now preparing national investment plans due in November in order to secure the disbursement of funds. There are two concerns regarding safe’s legal underpinning. The first is in respect of Article 122 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which gives SAFE its legal basis. Article 122 is an emergency measure that permits the European Commission and the Council to bypass the Parliament in cases of "...severe difficulties caused by natural disasters or exceptional occurrences...". With EU member states' military spending currently at €343 billion, more than double that of Russia which is the EU’s alleged main adversary, there is no evidence it is necessary to spend the further €150 billion which Commission President Ursula von der Leyen says is "fully justified". There is no evidence to support that.
The European Parliament agrees with this and has taken a legal challenge against the Commission, but that legal challenge is on the basis of the legal underpinning of SAFE and not on the substance of it, which shows again that the Parliament is unwilling to fulfil its primary function, which is to hold an entirely unelected body that wields significant power and resources to account. Rather, the Parliament is seeking a workaround to rubber-stamp the Commission’s behaviour and wash its hands of the matter. This failure to hold to account the Commission was called out already by the office of the European Ombudsman.
A second legal question that arises here is Article 41.2 of the Treaty on the European Union, which prohibits the use of EU budget for "expenditure arising from operations having military or defence implications". SAFE will see applicant countries draw down loans that are secured against the EU's budget. If member states default on repayments it will fall to the EU as guarantor of the fund to pick up the bill. This would see the EU's budget being disbursed to cover the cost of procuring lethal weapons, something which is prohibited under EU law. Ireland, as a net contributor to the EU, would then potentially be picking up a part of that bill.
This must be seen in a broader overall context. In December 2020 the outgoing Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly sounded the alarm on what she said was "a powerful, unelected and untransparent culture at the top of the European Commission". SAFE embodies all of what is so fundamentally wrong with the EU: an unelected body creates a legally unsound pool of money in the form of €150 billion worth of loans that will be backstopped by the EU’s budget to fund the purchase of lethal weapons, something that is prohibited under EU law.
All of this is done in a manner that bypasses national parliaments, and even the European Parliament, so that by the time we discuss it, it is after the fact and the loans have already been allocated. This is a crisis in democracy.
It is not an isolated incident, though. It is part of a pattern where the EU has been running roughshod over its own laws for some time now. Though the EU is not a military union, it is preparing for war and SAFE is an essential part of that. In fact, it should be considered a war fund because it is anchored in the EU’s March 2025 White Paper for European Defence - Readiness 2030, which I have with me.
At this moment, as the European Union is preparing for war, the Irish Government, instead of enhancing safeguards to keep Ireland out of war, is actually removing them altogether by introducing legislation to dismantle the triple lock, which will put people directly in harm’s way. We are almost two years into Israel’s genocidal war in Palestine, now formally recognised as such by the UN. At least 69,000 people have been killed and as we sit here today, over 2 million people are being forcibly starved to death in Gaza, yet the EU still needs more time to act. Though references to Palestine and the triple lock may seem unrelated to the task at hand, discussing SAFE would be a futile exercise if we were not to take into account this broader context. It must be understood within the context where the EU and its member states have been eroding international law for quite some time in their normalisation of war and genocide.
Where does Ireland sit in this? Despite the legal concerns I set out and the broader context, the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, indicated in June that his Department "should leverage" the SAFE regulation to speed up the delivery of Ireland’s defence capability.
To conclude, I will reiterate what I said when I came before this committee 18 months ago, though I do not know that it was heeded then and I am not sure that it will be now. Ireland is a neutral country. We do not start wars, we do not participate in them and Article 29 of our Bunreacht calls for the peaceful settlement of international disputes, as does the UN Charter. Participating in the production of lethal weaponry that is used to start and prolong wars goes against the principles on which our nation and democracy were founded. Ireland must withhold public finance and political backing for this and all other war and military initiatives coming from Brussels and instead use our voice and our public resources for peace.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Go raibh míle maith agat. I now invite members to discuss this. My list is Deputies Brennan and Burke, Senator Higgins and Deputy O'Callaghan.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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My questions are primarily for Ms Ní Bhriain. I thank her for her opening statement and I also thank Ms Kinney. In reference to Ireland's neutrality, Ms Ní Bhriain said we did not start wars or participate in them. I am conscious that this is the finance committee and I do not want to get too caught up in neutrality and the triple lock. I appreciate it is worthy of further discussion, but not necessarily in the time allotted for this forum. The reality is Ireland is not going to start a fight - we will not start a war - but that is not saying a fight is not necessarily going to come to us at some point. It is not likely but it is not saying that it is not going to happen. In Ms Ní Bhriain's view, is contributing to the most effective deterrent available not a worthwhile endeavour?
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
No, I do not agree. I do not agree on military deterrence. We are a small island nation. We can never defend ourselves militarily and it would be a disaster if we tried. At the moment, the Government is talking about acquiring fighter jets - eight, but potentially up to 14 - that would be stationed on the runway at Shannon Airport. I am from County Clare. It does not make me feel safe that there would be 14 fighter jets on the runway at Shannon Airport. If Ireland were to be attacked, the first place that would be attacked is precisely those 14 fighter jets. They would be taken out. If you get into the logic of thinking that you can defend yourself militarily and that having military power or might is a deterrent, then you get into this logic where you are increasing that all the time such that we would eventually need to acquire a nuclear bomb, essentially. That is the road you are going down if you start to think that by arming up and being militarily superior, you will somehow be able to protect yourself.
Ireland’s only defence is our neutrality. It is to make ourselves a place where we are not likely to be targeted. If we become a military force, we are much more likely to be taken out. If we are not a military force, if we do not signify a threat to anyone, and we use our place in the world to build peace, then we are much more likely to be left alone.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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Maybe I did not phrase the question correctly. I was not referring to Ireland building a force that we could unilaterally defend ourselves with. I was talking about contributing to the wider EU project and in that becoming a large-scale deterrent.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
Again, that would be Ireland contributing, so we would be part of a growing military entity, which would expose us. It is important to come back to what the Irish people have said in two consecutive referendums. In Nice and Lisbon, we voted no the first time around because we were worried that we would get dragged into a European military structure. Participating in these funds is undemocratic because the Irish people have said they do not want that and it is also potentially unconstitutional because we have two referendums that were built on the back of our not participating in military structures. We are going down a really dangerous road in terms of what the country actually stands for democratically and constitutionally and we are also potentially exposing ourselves to a military threat. I cannot see why we would participate in a European Union military project. It will not keep us safe, but expose us, and we have no obligation to do so under European Union law. We have a carve out. We have the triple lock. We can keep ourselves outside of these military structures and our neutrality should be respected within that.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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We could go further down that route but, again, that is probably for another time and place.
Ms Ní Bhriain is talking about contributing militarily. I am talking about contributing financially. I know this is a contentious aspect and I am sure, and hopeful, that Ms Ní Bhriain will tell us more about the backstop of the €150 billion guarantee. The reality is that, even if Ireland does not avail of purchases under the SAFE instrument but we are purchasing this stuff, I believe we should get it at the cheapest price possible and, therefore, the instrument is useful to us. However, the contribution I am talking about is being part of the backstop. I understand there are legal issues in the articles and the treaties that would prevent us meeting an obligation under that backstop because, in theory, we would be paying directly for weapons. That is what I want to hear a little more of Ms Ní Bhriain’s view on.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
The Deputy has made a distinction between contributing militarily and contributing financially. I do not think Ireland should be participating in any way, shape or form militarily, financially or otherwise. Our public resources should be going to the better good of the people. We just heard some discussion on the impact of climate. As I said, I am from County Clare. We have no functioning hospital in Ennis. We have to go into Limerick and if you go into Limerick hospital you are in big trouble because it is overworked and under-resourced. If we are coming at this from a financial point of view, there is no logic that should see Ireland contributing. For example, Ireland puts money into a pot and that money is used to buy lethal weapons. There are two categories under SAFE. There is ammunition, electronic warfare, AI warfare and defence missiles systems. Why would we want to invest our financial resources in weapons of death? If they are not used in Ireland, which we certainly hope they will not be, they will then be exported to create and prolong wars in other places.
This is not about defence; this is about war-making and war-fighting and the massive profits that are made in war.
In terms of the backstop, the way the loans are acquired is that the European Commission raises capital on the international markets. It acquires funds. There are at the moment 19 countries that have submitted requests for the weaponry that will be funded under this. They are now preparing their national investment plans, and those have to be submitted by November. The Council will then sign off on those and they will be adopted in January. Once that happens, the money will start flowing. It will be funnelled through the European Commission to the member states. The loans will be taken out by the member states, but the backstop is against the European Union's public budget. Poland is the country that has sought the most money here. If Poland were to default on a loan, for example, that would fall to the European Commission then to figure out how to repay that. Ireland, as a net contributor to the European Union, would necessarily then have to cough up. This is €150 billion worth of money which is not legally sound. Even the Parliament agrees with that. The Parliament has said that it does not have a problem with the substance; it has a problem with the legality. We are getting into really dangerous territory. Like I said, I was here 18 months ago, we were discussing €500 million and we were really concerned at that point that the European Union had broken its own rules to allow for €500 million to be spent on ammunition, something which is prohibited under EU law. Here we are again with €150 billion. At what point is enough enough? That is what I am worried about when we get into this logic of deterrence, that we need to constantly have more weapons to be able to stop an alleged aggressor.
The Deputy asks how we can use the instrument and says it would be useful. It would not be useful. It is about funding weapons of war. These will be used to kill people. The people who are starving to death in Gaza right now, engineered famine, are being starved to death under military occupation, and much of the weaponry that is being used to starve those people to death and to enforce that military occupation is coming through Irish airspace, potentially through Shannon Airport, and is coming from European Union member states. We have to be very clear. We are seeing the erosion of international law in Gaza and now we are seeing the erosion of EU law with these funds. If we allow what is happening in Gaza to be normalised, we are all fair game and anyone is next. I do not want to live in a world like that and I do not think anyone in this room does either.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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I appreciate everything Ms Ní Bhriain has said. I have a final question.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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It is a final question if that is okay.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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I will come back to it if we have time.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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No, you have time for a final question.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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Clearly, Ms Ní Bhriain is coming at this from a pacifist perspective. I am coming at this from an EU financial instrument perspective. The countries availing of these loans - Poland and several others Ms Ní Bhriain mentioned - will, regardless of events, pacifist ideology or otherwise, invest in this weaponry, like it or not, as will many of the countries, particularly on Europe's eastern border. It is probably not fair to ask Ms Ní Bhriain this but, putting aside the legalities of it, because clearly that is problematic and something to be further expanded on, does the premise of the instrument make sense? Does it make sense to be as efficient as possible with the resources of EU nations? Ms Ní Bhriain made reference to investing in other parts of society. Clearly, if you are getting a certain part of your budget obligations cheaper, you therefore have more funds to invest in other parts of society. The instrument, outside of the legalities, to me anyway, appears to make financial sense. That is really what I am trying to elicit from Ms Ní Bhriain as to whether she also sees it making financial sense.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
No, I do not think it makes financial sense either because can you imagine a scenario where Poland does not repay the €46 billion that is allocated to it, just taking that as the biggest example? If Poland does not repay the €46 billion, why should that fall to Ireland to pick up part of that bill? Why would we be covering part of Poland's failure to repay? I am not an expert in finance but I do not think it makes sense that we would set up an instrument which is secured against the European Union's budget and then we would have to pick up the bill for other states that default on their loans. The Deputy says "setting aside the legality". You cannot just set aside legality and decide what is legal today is not legal tomorrow. Again, I do not want to live in a world where there are no laws.
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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I agree with that, except-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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We need to wrap up. You will be able to come back in. Is that okay?
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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Of course, but I will just answer that particular point. The legality, at least temporarily, has been set aside because the instrument is in motion. That is what I mean by setting aside the legalities. It seems to be happening anyway but a discussion does need to happen around the legalities of it as to whether it can proceed.
The final point-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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If you want to come back in, you may do so. You have gone a bit over time, so-----
Shay Brennan (Dublin Rathdown, Fianna Fail)
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When I talk about Ireland potentially being left with a portion of Poland's bill, that is what I mean by investing in the deterrent. We are investing in strengthening Europe's eastern border to protect ourselves.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. Both presentations are critical of Europe and of Ireland. There was no reference in any one of the witnesses' statements to Israel, Russia or America, which are contributing to the conflicts. Is that not-----
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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But the whole focus seems to be criticism of Europe, whereas, for instance, one of the things the European Union has done over the last 40 years is that we have come from a conflict situation in the Second World War to where now 460 million people live in peace. The question is whether that is at risk now, and I do not think the presentations dealt with that issue.
I will go on to deal with the triple lock system. One of the problems about the triple lock is that a number of countries can block a UN mandate being given. For example, if in the morning Russia decided not to carry out any more bombing or conflict in Ukraine and that it would not move forward any further in relation to the territory it now occupies, and if the UN in the morning decided to put in a peacekeeping force in there, the likelihood is that both Russia and China would object to that happening. That means that if Ireland wanted to send in troops to help out troops from either Poland or any other European country, we would not be able to do it. Is that not the correct position?
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Just a reminder, in terms of the triple lock and so on, to keep it within the remit of this committee.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I know but I am giving an example where if there were a decision in the morning by the European Union to send in troops to Ukraine, and if there were a cessation of hostilities, the likelihood is that Russia would not allow the UN to deploy troops. Is that not the correct position? Therefore, under the triple lock system, because we would not have a UN mandate, we would not be able to deploy troops.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Because this is more about these two COMs, just try to focus your contribution on the COMs, Deputy.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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There was a criticism of the triple lock system. I am just giving the example where we could be of assistance in keeping peace but we would be prevented from doing so by Russia.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I ask Ms Ní Bhriain to deal with the example I gave.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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The advice is that this committee is not dealing with the triple lock. If we go into it too much-----
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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No, but it was raised and the triple lock system is an issue that Ireland should not move away from.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Can you do so succinctly?
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
Yes. The Irish Army participates in the EU battle groups.
EU battle groups are fully operational as of this year, and Ireland participates in them. That is fundamentally problematic if they are deployed, for example, in Ukraine without a United Nations mandate. The only international body tasked with peace and security is the United Nations. No other international body-----
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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-----the argument I am making is that there is now a flaw in the whole UN process.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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There is a flaw in the whole UN process.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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It is one person at a time. However, it is the member's time to speak.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
Perhaps I can respond. The only body that is tasked with international peace and security is the United Nations. It is only under a United Nations banner that Ireland has any legitimacy to send its troops overseas. Any other deployment is not compatible with United Nations international law. This is a matter that it outside the remit of this committee. That is all I have to say.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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We are now in the real world. All I am saying is that it is quite clear that the United Nations does not have a mandate in many areas because of the power that Russia, China and America have. That has neutralised the impact of the UN from the point of view of peacekeeping. That is the point I am making.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the Deputy. He has made his point. It is his time to make the point he wants to make. He is now halfway through his time, so let us focus on the COMs.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I will move on to what the witnesses said about what has occurred in Europe. For the past 25 or 30 years, the threat of Russia was not there. A huge change has occurred, and Europe must respond accordingly. The problem is that if we wait around, it is obvious from what America is now saying that it is not prepared to help Europe at any time in the future. AS a result, Europe needs to deal with the threat. Would the witnesses not accept that?
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
-----and not by arming up. We already have two very powerful examples in the world wars. We saw military investment and expansion, a growth in military forces, and ended up in world wars. We have seen that happen twice. Here we are not learning the lessons of the past and militarising again. That is not going to end well. If you want to learn from the past, then Europe should be investing in peace, dialogue and negotiations. There were two moments in 2022 when Ukrainian and Russian officials were sitting down at a table together discussing peace. Europe did not send a peace envoy to those discussions. On the fourth day of the Ukraine war, teams of negotiators from Ukraine and Russia were sitting down to talk. It was at that precise moment that Ursula von der Leyen in Brussels and Olaf Scholz in Berlin decided they were going to send hundreds of billions of euro worth of weapons to Ukraine. That was four days into the war. If we wanted peace, why did we not at that point refrain from offering military assistance and say we would send a peace envoy to the peace talks? Here we are, more than three and a half years later, and it is as clear as day that sending weapons to Ukraine has done nothing to stop the war but has only prolonged it. The Ukrainians are paying the highest price.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I was in Gaza in 2009 when Israel bombed a whole lot of areas there, killing 1,400 people, including 400 children. I visited four weeks after that bombing took place. They used the changeover period between American Presidents, from 27 December 2008 until 18 January 2009, to go in, carry out that bombing and kill innocent people. That was 15 years ago. If action was taken by the international community at that stage, we now would not have the problem we have now. The international community sat back and did nothing. There was another outbreak in 2012. If Europe does not prepare, what we are now seeing in Gaza will happen in countries in Europe. That is the real world we are in.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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There is, because of the fact that-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Let us try to have one speaker at a time.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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No protection was provided to Gaza after 2009 to ensure there would be no repeat of what occurred.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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Is Ms Ní Bhriain saying-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Can we have one speaker at a time? The Deputy can ask a question or make a point. Is Ms Kinney indicating? Is that what she is suggesting? No. Go ahead, a Theachta.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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The problem Europe has is the conflict that has occurred in Ukraine. There is a genuine fear that it will spread to other European counties. Therefore, Europe must be careful that is not allowed to happen.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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That has not worked in Gaza.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
We cannot compare with Gaza, which is a strip of land the size of half of County Louth. It is being occupied by the strongest military force in the world, backed up by the US, the European Union and Britain. We cannot compare Gaza, which conflict is about an occupied people in a tiny strip of land, with the entirety of the European Union, which has one of the strongest military forces in the world. I am sorry, but the comparison does not line up.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Before the Deputy comes in, I note that Ms Kinney is indicating and may want to come in. We need to try to wrap up this segment. I am giving the Deputy some leeway because we were not dealing with this topic earlier. I call Ms Kinney.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
It can be tricky when we start talking about hypothetical situations. It is useful to try to remain grounded in reality as much as we can. It is interesting that we talk so much about the various threats that Europe faces, the big overarching threat of Russia and the threats authoritarian governments across the world are posing risks to people's security, when there is the very real threat of the climate crisis, which is not hypothetical. It is a very real and current crisis. Money is being reallocated and action is being taken around hypotheticals, and that is worsening the state of global emissions due to the rearmament of Europe. When we think about threats, unfortunately, at the moment we must think about multiple threats. We must consider the broad situation we are in at the moment.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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We are coming to the end of the Deputy's time.
Colm Burke (Cork North-Central, Fine Gael)
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I am not in favour of arms or ammunition being purchased. That is the last thing I want to happen. The best example in respect of arms relates to the fact that 46,000 people in America died as a result of the use of guns in a 12-month time period. By comparison, we in Ireland are grateful that only five people were admitted to hospital with gunshot wounds in the same period. The more we can keep away from arms and that whole area, the better. However, the problem is the change that has occurred and the imbalance that has now occurred as regards the political changes happening worldwide. That is the danger Europe now faces and must deal with.
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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I thank our guests for their opening statements. What we are discussing in terms of process and outcome is absolutely shocking. The point Ms Ní Bhriain's made to the effect that EU member states' military spending currently stands at €343 billion, which is more than double that of Russia, is important in the context of justifications for taking an emergency approach. It is not as if there is not an incredibly large amount of spending happening at European Union member state level as it is. That is an important part of the equation.
I have a question on which I would like the insight of both witnesses. At present, more than 5,000 children are homeless or living in emergency accommodation.
We have an absolute housing crisis and a housing disaster. All of us know what an incredibly serious situation we are in at global level when it comes to climate and how, if we do not act and act much more than we have been, there is not going to be a future. Housing, in terms of people's day-to-day lives, and climate, in terms of the future of our race, our planet and our survival, are incredibly important. In the context of this proposal for joint procurement and the measures in question, has anything been done at European Union level on housing or climate that is similar to what is being done here regarding joint procurement for the provision of lethal military equipment?
Ms Ellie Kinney:
Specifically on the climate side, the EU has had a real focus on the European Green Deal, although we are seeing a kind of shifting focus in respect of it at the moment. We are seeing proposals like the one we are talking about that are putting the European Green Deal at risk. On the finances - and someone please correct me if I am wrong - and these exclusions of fiscal rules that are happening in this instance, I do not think we have seen similar applied when it comes to the climate crisis. This is despite the fact that the climate crisis could very well be seen, and should be seen, as an emergency situation.
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Has there been joint procurement in respect of climate measures?
Ms Ellie Kinney:
I could not confidently say "No". Off the top of my head, I know more about Europe's military climate action. For example, the European Defence Agency has a consortium that looks at renewable projects within military forces and that this works across Europe, but that is absolute small fry. It is tiny compared with the sums of money we are talking about here.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
On the emergency dimension, Article 122, as far as I know, was used to activate an emergency response to Covid, which is understandable. Most countries were activating emergency responses but they were not to use a massive amount of money to draw down loans that would be backstopped by the European Union's public budget. The legality of using that article broke very dangerous ground in the context of it being used for something that is not really justified. Even the Parliament agrees. I would often disagree with a lot of what comes out of the European Parliament, but even the it agrees that the legality of using this is not sound.
The funding for other dimensions of life such as social cohesion projects, which are now going to be regenerated, will now also go into defence or war. That was one of the main criticisms of what is proposed. We are at a moment when there is crumbling public infrastructure across many European Union countries, when housing is a massive problem and there are difficulties with hospitals and healthcare systems in the context of ageing populations. At no point has the European Union used anything similar to this to roll out €800 billion at the drop of a hat. It would be great if Ursula von der Leyen came to the podium at a press conference tomorrow and said, "Here we are - €800 billion for housing". That would be great, but it has not happened and is not going to happen. Housing is one of the biggest problems facing countries in Europe at the moment, and not least Ireland.
On joint procurement, this is something that one would see very often in the arms trade in the way the latter works. Consider a drone. Turkey is an example whereby we at one point tracked how a drone is actually made. Components were coming from Britain, France and Germany. They were all being exported to Turkey and the drones were being assembled there. There is a massive drone industry in Turkey. There is also one in Israel. Often, no one country will ever produce everything that is needed to make an armament. In the context of the arms industry, therefore, this kind of joint procurement necessarily lends itself to a process of building weapons that are more easily built if you have all of these partnerships in place. Often, the one that is championed as the example to follow is the F-35 fighter jet. As we know, these jets are being used to bombard Gaza right now. The F-35 is a US fighter jet, but it is fitted out using lots of European components. For example, the Netherlands exports a significant number of F-35 components. They were being sent directly to Israel but that was stopped because there was a court case in the Netherlands. However, I do not need to get into that. I mention the example of the F-35 because to get one of these jets built, companies will be building specific armaments or items of weaponry in different countries.
From the point of view of the arms industry, this whole fund has been built on the advice of the arms companies. This is written into the White Paper for European Defence - Readiness 2030. There is a strategic dialogue with what is referred to as the defence industry. They have been pushing for these joint procurement measures for years because it is much more fluid then to have the ability to build weaponry if such measures are in place.
One of the really problematic dimensions to this fund is that it is split such that 65% of the components for the weaponry systems and the procurement can come from within Europe and 35% from a third country. That can be any third country. It could be Israel, for example. We are setting ourselves up to spend massive amounts of money - of around €150 billion - in circumstances where, as a result of the procurement mechanisms, 35% of the components that go into building weaponry systems could be going to Israel. There is no restriction on the countries that are not part of the core group. This is really worrying.
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Earlier, reference was made to the Tánaiste indicating in June that his Department should leverage the SAFE regulation to speed up delivery of Ireland's defence capability. Since that statement was made, have we found out anything more about this? Is there any more detail or do we know anything more?
Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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But it could happen.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
We could leverage it. At the moment, countries are doing their national plans. The total amount is €150 billion, but each country has to submit a maximum and a minimum amount. The minimum amount stands at about €129 billion. The maximum amount is at approximately €200 billion. When all the national plans are finalised, it will come in at about €150 billion. It could be that Ireland is late to the game and we just did not get ourselves together on time, thankfully, to actually draw down these loans. There was certainly an intention to do so.
The European Defence Fund, which is completely separate, amounts to €8 billion. This fund is for weapons research and development rather than direct procurement, although it is highly problematic as well. I was looking at it the other day. There are Irish participants in that. It is not the Irish Government. University College Cork has a project that is getting funding through the European Defence Fund, and there are a few other Irish entities there. It might be that we were late to the game and did not organise ourselves on time. However, there was definitely an intention on the part of Ireland to participate. Who knows? Maybe we will if there is another round. It has been stated that this is an exception, a once-off and a temporary measure. However, that is what we discussed when I was here 18 months ago - I am back again. It is quite likely. Ireland has given this the green light. They said they back it, so it could happen.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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There is a huge amount to unpack. My questions fall into two areas, namely, where the money is coming from and where the money is going to, staying within our remit as a finance committee and looking at those components. Of the two COMs or proposals, one is about the redirection of previously planned funds and then there is the massive new loan guarantee system. I might go a little bit into where it is coming from and then where it is going to.
It is worth being really clear for the record that one of the key things, certainly in terms of COM 123, is that we are talking about the social cohesion funding. This is not just about whether Ireland wants to spend on arms and all of that. Ireland is a country that understands how you invest in social cohesion. I want to bring Ms Kinney in on this as well. When we talk about the actual threats to security and the work that needs to be done in terms of security, one of the key things is recognising the genuine threat that exists in terms of climate. Another key factor that we in Ireland also know is the need for positive measures on social cohesion. For example, social cohesion funding has been key in helping to secure and maintain peace in the North and ensuring there are constructive and positive measures for communities on the Border, and in terms of dialogue. Given Europe's long and bloody history of internal conflict in the pre-European Union times in terms of colonialism but also the internal fights, one of the great prizes in Europe has been peace. That peace has come not from a heavily armed Europe post the Second World War, but from the European project moving to a point of political dialogue and co-operation between countries, many of which had histories of conflict between them. When we talk about social cohesion, it is important to have that frame. It is one of the great examples of a peace project because of that refocusing. It was even in the initial coal and steel Act. One of the purposes of these economic activities and this redirection was to direct away from the arms industry. It was specifically mentioned in that founding document. which uses language along the lines of "of whom our own people are the greatest victims", to paraphrase.
Social cohesion funding incorporates regional development funding, which is crucial for our regions, the Cohesion Fund, the social fund and the just transition fund. These are the areas that are very good planks for preparing us for the future in terms of looking to a just transition. Ms Kinney might come in on this piece. We are seeing climate events happening already. The necessary actions that are needed to lower our emissions must not be made flashpoints of conflict. Is it not the case that those funds are now being directed under this new measure to defence and strategic technologies? That is a key new area, namely, the defence industry. Will our guests comment, from a safety and security perspective, on what it means to redirect funds from these very good purposes? Leaving aside the question of whether we should spend on arms, what are we taking away from from an environmental and social cohesion perspective? The matter is treated as if we can opt in or do what we want but actually there is a pressure point. Preferential access for cohesion funding is conditional. The eastern European border regions have to move at least 15% of their overall cohesion funding to these newly introduced specific objectives, including defence. In order to get prioritisation within the overall EU cohesion funding, a member state needs to show it has decided to shift funding towards these new priorities. Our guests might comment on the implications of that.
They might also comment on those huge loans that have been guaranteed or underwritten. I was commenting on housing but it would be great to hear Ms Kinney's remarks on climate and the environment. We have not seen the same flexibilities. For example, Germany is effectively suspending fiscal rules for defence spending, something it would not have allowed to happen anywhere else in the past. We have not seen that same kind of emergency response or security response to the climate in terms of ensuring that money is not an object to the activities necessary to deal with what in the case of climate is not a potential crisis but a known and measurable threat. Will our guests comment on that sourcing?
I am sorry, as that was a bit of a long introduction. I will contribute again, when I will revert on the question of where the money is going, but this is about where the money is coming from.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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That is fine. Before Ms Kinney responds, we had to receive legal advice before today's meeting. I wish to flag that the committee is aware that the European Parliament has lodged a request with the European Court of Justice regarding the SAFE regulation. It is important that the committee not prejudice that case in any way.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
Thank you. It is excellent framing to have a look at where the money is coming from and where it is going to. We might think about where the money is coming from and pick up on two key areas within this. The Senator mentioned social cohesion funding. It speaks for itself how closely that is tied to real human security. Security is so much broader than military might. Real human security in terms of how safe people feel in their communities and how we are able to function as a society is, if anything, the security that impacts people far more often on a daily basis. As to the money being taken from the just transition fund, that fund exists to support the communities that may be left behind in the move towards climate neutrality, for example, communities that might be reliant on certain industries that move further away. I am from the north west of England. I was brought up in a post-industrial town where unemployment was an issue and one could really see the social issues that came from that. This brings me back to the question of what security is. If asked, the majority of people on the street would say that what made them feel safe and secure was a stable income and a roof over their head. This is the real human security that affects us every day. There is that issue in terms of where the money is coming from. We have to factor those things in with the fact that where it is going to is directly worsening the climate crisis. There are no two ways about it. This is a fully non-hypothetical situation. An increase in military spending will increase emissions. This will worsen the climate crisis. It will make the Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to 1.5o Celsius not possible. These things will get further and further away from us unless we act now.
It is useful to think about the framing of the short-term security that proposals like this invest in, which sounds reassuring because it is short-term security, but there is a much bigger picture to look at here. By our calculations, the climate impact of ReArm Europe, taken together with NATO's spending increase, will create up to $264 billion of climate damage per year. It is directly taking money from a pot that is to support climate neutrality and funnelling it into something that will create climate damages of up to $264 billion per year.
We have not really seen this kind of mobilisation and this framing of the climate emergency on a real, European level. A few years ago, there was real momentum behind the European Green Deal. We now seem to have changed our focus so that we can only have one threat at a time and it is now the threat of Russia we have to deal with. These are not singular issues. There is a range of things going on at the moment and the climate crisis is a very real threat impacting all of Europe at the moment. It goes to show that money can be mobilised at speed where there is the political will to do so. We absolutely need that kind of response to the climate crisis as an incredibly real threat that is impacting people now and will only continue to impact people more and more the further away we get from 1.5°C warming.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
I will come in on where the money comes from. This is the White Paper on defence readiness 2030. It sets out a five-pillar plan for where the money would come from for the €800 billion fund. Today, we are only discussing €150 billion of that, which is the SAFE fund. That is the money that will be drawn down in loans. The other dimension of that is another part of the pillar which goes under an umbrella term, which is flexing existing EU instruments such as the Cohesion Fund. That is the other dimension of today's discussion. That is another one of the pillars, that they would be flexing the just transition fund, the Cohesion Fund and all of those. The other three pillars are about activating the national escape clause, contributions from the European Investment Bank and also mobilising private capital. That is the European Union's five-pillar plan for where the money would come from.
We will come to the issue of where the money will go, but again it is this idea that you can just pull €800 billion out of the sky. In terms of social cohesion, it is money that would often go to the periphery. There is this idea that there are periphery zones in Europe that could benefit from further investment but that this money would be funnelled into building military systems and war and all of that. That is very clearly laid out. A new document was published online and I was looking at it before I came to the meeting. The regulations have now been set out. There are two regulations that went online on 18 September and they set out very clearly how this reallocation of how this funding would go.
The wording they use on cohesion is that it is a modernised cohesion policy. I have the document here in the mix of all of this, but it can be accessed on the European Union's website. It is the language that is being used - "a modernised cohesion policy" and "a mid-term review". We are halfway through the European Union's seven-year budgetary cycle now and have decided we need to modernise. It is the use of this language. Why are we saying the redirecting of funding from cohesion policy to militarism is modernising, like it is something we should be proud of and it is seen as something progressive? We need to be mindful of the language being used around cohesion.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I thank Ms Ní Bhriain. I would like to go to the second half of my questions. Given that those documents came in after our call for submissions I would be very happy to receive comments related to those new documents. That would be useful.
The last thing I will say about social cohesion, before I go to the expenditure piece, is that it strikes me when we think about security and social cohesion that the United States has the most well-funded military in the world yet we have seen extraordinary exploitation of the creation of division. We have seen a rise of quite far right perspectives. Arguably, I know there have been suggestions that the lack of social cohesion and the creation of division has been encouraged by and beneficial to certain actors who have been accused of disinformation, such as Russia and others. Having a very large military is not the thing that actually protects you in those circumstances whereas social cohesion and dialogue are the kinds of things that offer very good protection and merit investment.
This leads to my next point. The thing about weapons is that when they are bought and built we do not know, ultimately, who gets to use them. Instead of investing in social cohesion to hold our European Union and the societies within it together in the face of very divisive far right and authoritarian perspectives, we now see a switch to the idea of creating large armies in every country, but we do not know who gets to use them. This is something that came up in the context of the arms support Act when the previous committee reviewed that. We heard from the Commission then that there did not seem to be any safeguards. We know for a fact that of the €500 million fund, which is much smaller than the huge funds we are talking about now, some of it went to arms manufacturers to boost their production. Some of it went directly to companies that provide tank missiles to Israel that have been used in Gaza. That is a fact. It is on the public record. We know that is the case. The Commission simply indicated there were no protections in place in relation to that.
What is not clear to me is that this extraordinary channelling of funding into the military industry does not seem to be coming with any caveats at the moment. Maybe Ms Ní Bhriain can confirm or clarify if she knows of anything. It should have been scrutinised at European Parliament level, where this might have been teased out, and it is disgraceful that it was not. We have not seen any evidence that it is tied with the productive capacity of arms manufacturers, that those might not be used in exports. We were told it is because the emergency framing is that we need arms within Europe but it does not mean those arms will be constrained within Europe. For example, in Germany, as I understand it, there was a ten-fold increase in the export of weapons to Israel during the period of those military actions. In that context, there does not seem to be a constraint on how this increased military capacity will be used and how much of it will effectively benefit companies who will be acting.
A key point Ms Ní Bhriain mentioned, and I would love if she could elaborate on it, was the components. Will she elaborate on that 35% piece? The idea that we could be funding and, through procurement, creating the guaranteed market that allows the development of weaponry and components which could eventually contribute to and become part of one of the products which, horrendously, have been marketed as battle-tested weapon technologies from Israel. They have been marketed as battle-tested and that they had tried out those new experimental weaponry tools. Earlier this week, I sat at a meeting of the committee on foreign affairs and we heard about the robot tanks currently demolishing large sections of Gaza city.
I just want to be clear on where the money might be going. There does not seem to be constraints in terms of preventing that. The 35% issue seems to be a recipe for that. In terms of-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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The witness is indicating, just in case the Senator wishes to allow her to reply before she changes the topic.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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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.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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That was my final question. I know-----
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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No, that is okay. That is not what I was going to say at all. Given the advice that I always read out at the start, it is better not to mention companies or entities by name.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I do know the names of the companies.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I know the Senator knows that, but we do have guests, so it is just that everybody understands.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Companies or entities.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Does Ms Kinney want to start because she has been indicating for a while?
Ms Ellie Kinney:
Linking back to the social cohesion point from before, all of my work is largely focused on military decarbonisation and military emissions reporting. One of the best forms of military decarbonisation is peacebuilding and work towards social cohesion. It ties together wonderfully. That is one of the best ways for us to progress as a society in this topic.
Going back to whether there are environmental or related caveats within the spending, there is a culture of military exceptionalism across the EU. Therefore, it does not surprise me that I have basically not seen any kinds of restrictions or caveats or sections within this that are meant to curtail in any way the damage this spending will cause. I am not surprised by this because we see in every other relatively helpful and progressive EU policy the caveat that militaries are exempt from this. For example, a couple of weeks ago, there was a proposal on F-gases, which are highly polluting. The caveat within that, of course, was that militaries need not worry about the proposal. This happens across the board. We are very used to it at this point. As a result, there is no such proposal alongside what is happening. We know there are going to be excessive increases in military procurement. While we have this moment of great investment, let us use it to create a framework whereby we report on the emissions of the various militaries and their use and supply chains. That is not happening, though. There is no standardised approach to reporting military emissions in the EU. There has been EU policy around this topic and there has been progress. There was an EU militaries and climate change roadmap, which spoke to the need to have a standardised approach to reporting of military emissions. Ahead of COP28, the European Parliament voted in the resolution that it does annually as regards COP. It included language around the need for the EU to really push within the UNFCCC for a standardised approach to emissions reporting. We have seen absolutely no follow-up on any of this. What we have is a black hole of data. There were estimates recently that there was an 82% gap between what EU militaries reported to the UNFCCC they were emitting and how much climate damage they were actually doing. It is 82%; that is a huge amount.
We have this moment that could be useful. We are going to invest in this and while we are doing so, let us create the capacity to report on the emissions, but that has absolutely not been the case.
Similarly, this could be a moment when we talk about military decarbonisation. Realistically, this will take the form of peacebuilding, which is the best form of military decarbonisation. In the real world we live in, however, there will still need to be militaries, so there is a need for lower carbon technologies. There could be great investment in lower carbon technologies in the procurement push right now, but that is not happening. Instead, what we are seeing are countries proposing things like F-35 fighter jets and what those entail. They might be in use for the next 20 or 30 years. That is a carbon lock-in for the next 20 or 30 years, which will continue to hinder our attempts to reach net zero.
It is unsurprising to me that there is this military exceptionalism because it happens across the board.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I thank Ms Kinney. I call Ms Ní Bhriain.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
I hope to be able to respond to all of the matters. My starting point is the European Union's common position from 2008, that being, the European Union regulation, law or legal structure that oversees the export of arms outside the European Union. However, each member state interprets that and applies it in its own particular way with its own particular standards. There is no body that is overseeing how that is being applied or implemented on a member state level. Consider all of the weapon exports that have continued from the European Union to Israel, for example. We have seen a genocide taking place, which has now been formally confirmed by the United Nations. If we were upholding international law, it is clear that all such exports would have stopped immediately once the International Court of Justice made its interim ruling in January 2024. That is, if we were to be applying the European Union's common position on arms exports since 2008 with any kind of teeth, but we do not do that.
That is the European Union level. Each state on its own individual level has its own criteria for how it issues an export license. Export licences are attached to particular pieces of weaponry, so there might be an export licence for rifles, for example. The export licence might have been granted in 2009 but the rifles might not have been made and readied for export until much later. For example, Germany might not be making new licences to export to Israel, but all of the licences that are in place for the next five years or the like will continue. Therefore, there is often a licence but the actual product that is being licensed is not exported until much later. With those licences and exports, there is an end-user agreement. That is where the country involved with the export and the licence will have an agreement that the end place of use for that particular weaponry is Morocco or Algeria. I am just giving examples. It would be a particular place in a particular country.
There is no control over where the weapons actually end up. With the end-user agreements, there is no follow-up, there is no accountability and there is nobody to come in after the fact. We looked at a case of rifles that were being exported from Romania to Serbia and then they were going from there to the Democratic Republic of Congo and being used by the army in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We could actually map that in North Kivu these European Union weapons were being used for massive displacement of people locally. We looked at similar cases. I know about the Turkish drones because we looked at export from Europe to Turkey and those drones that I discussed were actually being used in Syria. There is absolutely no control, once a piece of weaponry leaves the European Union, on how it will be used. That goes for the components as well. Weapons will be built up with components from various different countries, licensed by one of those countries, and then exported. One of the things that the European Union is looking at now is to reduce or remove almost altogether the capacity for European Union member states to move components across the different countries without any restrictions at all. For example, if the Netherlands wants to send components to Belgium, there needs to be an export agreement in place between other European Union member states. There is now a move to get rid of that. Germany and France are pushing back against it because they are afraid that it might have implications for their market, and Germany and France are very significant and they control how these things go because that is where many of the big companies go. It is important to mention as well that there is a massive black market in weapons. Often, when there is an end-user agreement, it can be about weapons that will often end up in the black market. We looked at weapons that had been used in the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s and they ended up in Colombia, and being used much later on by FARC in Colombia. There is a massive amount of corruption in the arms trade. It is one of the most corrupt industries in the world.
On the question of risk assessment, there has been no risk assessment. I remember when I was here last. There been no time, but it is such an urgency we are told. I remember when I was here looking at the Act in Support of Ammunition Production, ASAP, and we could see this €500 million, we knew the companies which I will not name. However, it was very clear that this public money was going to go to companies that were at that particular moment arming and backing a genocide. That is not an exaggerated statement; it is a fact. We can see that these companies are exporting and they are being provided with public funds from the European Union and that will only get worse. There has been no risk assessment. There has not been any opportunity at all for any democratic entity, not the national Parliament nor the European Parliament, to discuss this.
On the question of where might the weapons be used, it is important to look at the countries that are involved. Off the bat, Ukraine is a key component in this. There are the European Union member states and there are the security and defence partnerships which involve Norway, Moldova, South Korea, Japan, Albania, North Macedonia and Britain. There is also the potential to include Canada. However, an essential component in this is Ukraine, and that is written into the documentation on SAFE. We documented, and it has been documented by the United Nations, that before the war broke out in Ukraine in February 2022, Ukraine was one of the biggest suppliers of weapons to the military junta in Myanmar. That should terrify all of us. If we are going to align all of this military support or however you want to frame it, then we would be sending these weapons to Ukraine. If the war were to stop tomorrow, those weapons would be worth a fortune. Is there anyone who would say these weapons could not be sent now from Ukraine to Myanmar to support the military junta there, for example? Going back to the risk assessment, it was actually flagged by military analysts, that this, even in military terms, is terrifying. All of these weapons are being put out into the world and there is absolutely no control over how they will be used.
On who benefits, I named a number of countries, of which Italy, France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands are the bigger ones. However, on this particular fund, the SAFE fund, the top five are Poland, Romania, France, Hungary and Italy.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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To clarify, there are benefits in terms of who gets the loans but also benefits in terms of who benefits from the money and who is going to have weapons bought from them.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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We cannot name anyone.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I am asking about the countries, not the companies. I have heard it argued that this is effectively another bailout for German industry, for example.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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No, who are the big arms manufacturers which the loans will be used to buy weapons from?
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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They cannot be named.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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No, that is in terms of the loan.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I was not just asking about who gets the loans. The €46 billion Poland gets will be spent on weapons.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Ultimately, regardless of who gets the loans, the actual beneficiary of this publicly guaranteed money is also the country with large manufacturing capacities for weapons which the loans are used to buy weapons from. Is it accurate to say that Germany and France-----
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Yes. I am asking about where the money lands in the end, in terms of the European economy.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
If Poland gets the money, how does Poland spend it? This comes to the 65%-35% piece which is that if Poland gets €46 billion and goes to spend it, 65% has to be in the European market or in one of the security and defence partnership countries, which could include the seven that I listed. We do not know because the national plans are not in yet. They will be in November, but I imagine it would again go to the biggest European arms countries, namely, France, Germany and Italy.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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I was not aware of this. I am a bit alarmed now. To be clear, 35% of that money could be spent on third countries, so those battle-tested weapons I mentioned that were manufactured in Israel and used in Gaza could be bought with public money.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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There is no restriction on cluster munitions named as yet. Is that correct?
Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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I have been observing the meeting from the office for some time. It is really important that the finance committee is doing this work in the scrutiny of these COMs, and I thank the witnesses for being with us today. From the conversation and the debate, the lack of transparency is obvious. This is the job I can see that this committee is trying to do and indeed on the defence committee we try to do this as well. As in most cases, we have to follow the money. There is no better place to do that than in the finance committee. As was said, we need more information on all of these topics, like where the funding is being generated and where exactly it is being diverted from. All of us who have a mandate to be here in the Oireachtas have a responsibility to ensure that the taxpayers and the voters who put us here get answers to those questions. Senator Higgins made a significant point about loans that will have to be paid back in the future and asked what will happen if another member state does not pay off their loan? We are a net contributor to the EU. What is going to protect us from having to pay off that loan way into the future? This could be in the medium term or indeed in the long term. We are constantly being told that there is not funding for many things, including social cohesion.
We have long talked about the democratic deficit for the 500 million people who live in the EU in terms of money being spent, particularly for those who are left behind and who continue to be marginalised, and the widening inequality gap. That certainly deserves further scrutiny. It is important that all of the committees in the Oireachtas, particularly the committees on finance, defence and foreign affairs, work together to get to the bottom of how these things are being done.
There certainly is a responsibility on member states, not least ourselves, to invest in defence. This is particularly for us as there has been neglect when it comes to investment in our Defence Forces. There is nothing that should stop us from doing that, particularly to ensure, for example, that members of the Defence Forces have proper pay and conditions and that we are able to recruit at the level that we need. Obviously, we all realise the dangers that exist and we understand that, even as a small member state, we need to be prepared. There is nothing to stop us from being good neighbours and having co-operation in different areas. We can work well as a collective without going down the avenues which some are seeking to have us go down.
On the situation with regard to the competitiveness agenda in the EU in the name of simplicity, we again need to be very careful in the area of defence and how money is being spent, particularly in the context of the deregulation of that space when it comes to workers' rights, environmental rights and other rights across the board. Those who are very astute at using spaces to evolve their own agendas see this as providing an opportunity.
When I was a member of this committee previously, we wrote to the EU a number of times to try to prevent Horizon funding going to Israel. We do not know where that money ends up because research and development covers a very large area. Research into and development of weaponry or dual-purpose goods needs to be looked at. I would suggest that this committee writes to the EU on that again.
What else do our guests think we need to do to ensure transparency in the spending of the suggested €800 billion? If we do not buy into what we are being encouraged to buy into here, what will be the repercussions for Ireland? How can we safeguard the people we represent in the context of the funding of munitions? The final question Senator Higgins asked on cluster munitions and the law around them was significant. Can it be the case that the law will be overridden with what is being attempted here?
I thank the committee for giving me time to ask questions even though I am not a permanent member. I do not think anybody should be afraid of transparency.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
There was no transparency in the process. As I said, it was the most antidemocratic and undemocratic of processes whereby those involved arrived at this €450 billion as part of the overall €800 billion. In terms of transparency generally, an Irish woman was in the EU Ombudsman's office for ten years. She left her post at the end of last year. It has been filled by someone else. During her tenure, she spoke very clearly about problems she had trying to get documentation from the European Commission. She was constantly being stonewalled. That has been documented, and her office has spoken about the matter on many occasions. In particular, she raised a concern around the lack of transparency regarding what is called defence but what is actually a military and war industry. She raised concerns around the European Defence Fund and the people involved in assessing who would be able to access that. Usually, one would need to know who those people were because of a potential conflict of interests, but it was not being made public. She requested information on the identity of the people overseeing the assessment and determination of whether projects got funding or not. I think it was in relation to the European Defence Fund, but it may have been the Act in Support of Ammunition Production. I am not sure, but the problem was the same, namely that the people were not being named.
The way these funds came about was in the context of the group of personalities. I am not sure if the committee is aware of that group. Basically, in 2015 the European Commission installed what it called a group of personalities comprising 16 people, nine of whom were directly connected to the arms industry. I cannot name the companies here but members can find out about them because all of the information is available online. Nine of those people are from the arms industry. They advised the European Commission that it should invest more in arms. That is how we came to have pilot funds that were, for the first time ever, funding the research and development of weaponry. Then we moved on from there to funding the actual production, which is what we were talking about here 18 months ago. Those people are from arms companies, but they are embedded in the political decision-making that is taking place in Brussels. They shape the political decisions. Once the money begins to flow from those decisions and once they are implemented, their companies benefit. Again, I cannot name the companies. However, we have reported on the companies that have sought funding from European Union funds that they were instrumental in creating. The European Commission is not naming the people who are involved in assessing the funds, which is very problematic. The EU Ombudsman's office has called it out. Maybe it is changing now or will change down the line. There is a big problem with transparency.
On competitiveness, we are seeing massive deregulation. It is a bonanza for corporate power. Again, it comes back to who is making the decisions and who is at the decision-making table. It is corporations that are not coming at this from the perspective of the public good; their motive is profit.
On Horizon funding, I have looked at a lot of Horizon Europe projects and lots of Israeli entities continue to receive money from that initiative.
I agree with the Deputy that members of the Irish Defence Forces should be paid a decent wage for the work they are doing. I participated in the neutrality roadshow. We went around Ireland and met with hundreds of people around the country. We had people come up to us who have family members in the Defence Forces who cannot speak up themselves. In Kenmare, for example, a mother came up to me. She was terrified. She asked who would keep our children safe if the triple lock is gone and they are sent off to war. She spoke about the conditions that the peacekeepers operate under. They should be getting a decent wage. If we have money to buy fighter jets, why can we not pay soldiers a decent wage?
There was one other question, but I cannot remember-----
Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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Have we an option to do that?
In terms of participating in the fund, are there any repercussions if we do not participate in it?
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
No, there are no repercussions. The fund has already been allocated by now and we are not in it. There are no repercussions for not participating. In terms of what Ireland can do at this point, one of the things is to not participate. It is really difficult because the European Union has been built in such a way that it is almost undemocratic by design. The European Union Commission wields so much power and resources and is not being held to account.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I am just conscious of time and Ms Kinney wants to come in. Ms Ní Bhrian can finish what she saying.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
At a bare minimum Ireland should not be participating in this fund and all of the other military structures like PESCO, for example. I saw the other day that there are Irish entities receiving funding through the European Defence Fund. Ireland is a neutral country. We are best placed in the world to use our voice for peace. If we go down the road of aligning ourselves with militaries in the European Union, which is what we are doing by participating in the European battle groups, we are aligning ourselves with an entity that is backing a genocide in Gaza and has taken no steps whatsoever to restrain Israel.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
There are additional layers such as the lack of other forms of transparency. There is no framework within this to improve European emissions reporting when it comes to militaries. That is therefore a whole additional layer of a lack of transparency that will come alongside with this. Across the EU there is no standardised approach to reporting so we see a real variation in the quality of reporting. When I refer to the variation in the quality of reporting, those who are on the upper scale of doing reporting well are still not doing well. It is a scale from moderately okay to terrible. This is what we are talking about here. Equally within the UNFCCC, it is even worse. There are very few EU countries that report comprehensively within the UNFCCC.
I also want to point to something else within this. We talk about the repercussions for Ireland and we keep mentioning the UNFCCC. It is important to think about the role that Ireland has played internationally with its disarmament and peace-focused approach to multilateralism. This is very much not the game that the EU is playing in COP at the moment. It has become an increasingly hostile actor at the COPs. It was instrumental in the decision to allocate a really disappointing amount of climate finance which was considerably less than global south countries were asking for. This keeps coming up. It came up last year and I know it will come up at this year's COP that one can see EU countries or the EU on the whole funnelling money into military spending and not delivering on climate finance. It is not delivering on climate finance promises but also not committing to giving any where near as much as is deserved for the amount of emissions it has put into the situation we are in now.
Another interesting layer in this is that we see the EU prioritising military spending over climate finance on a global south level, but also what is happening here with this very proposal is the EU prioritising military spending over climate funding at a community level in Europe. It is coming out of just transition funding that could be beneficial towards Irish communities and communities across the EU that is instead being directed to military spending, something that will only in turn worsen the climate crisis. At the same time we will not have the reporting available to tell us quite how bad it is. We will just be reliant on the sort of work we do around pulling together estimations which will attempt to plug the gap of transparency that currently exists within military culture.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I will go on to my own questions. When you are the last speaker a lot of stuff has already been raised and there are also things that come up as part of the conversation. One of the things that really stood out to me was the mobilising of private capital that Ms Ní Bhriain mentioned earlier. She referred to the €150 billion that is being borrowed. That is borrowed money and I will go into the impact that this could have on local economies later. Will Ms Ní Bhriain elaborate on how this is being borrowed from capital markets and where it is being borrowed from? Will she also comment a bit more on what she said about mobilising private capital? It would be quite interesting.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
I do not know anything else about mobilising private capital apart from what is in the White Paper on defence. They announced that they were going to release the €800 billion and they have gone through it in the different components. The one that they have dealt with in most detail is SAFE and that is now being activated. The regulations they are going to use to divert social cohesion funds came online on 18 September. They have not yet come as far as giving specifics on how they will mobilise private capital so I am not sure how it will take shape. I have not seen when it will be eventually rolled out.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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That will be very interesting when it is.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
They are focusing on the €150 billion in the SAFE in particular at the moment. That seems to be what they have gone for as the priority. It says that the Commission will be raising those loans on the international market. We have no idea yet where they will come from. At this point they are making their national plans. Each country is making a national investment plan. They will be adopted by the Council in January and they will start to disburse the loans. I presume that towards the end of the year they will have institutions that are willing to loan the money I have not yet seen any institutions named but maybe we are too early in the game for that.
The question that Deputy Conway-Walsh asked ties into this as well. At this particular point the countries are making their national plans. They will come before the Council in January. Ireland is on the Council. Ireland could, for example, vote against those national plans on a point of principle because this is not legally sound legislation.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Under what article? I am conscious of our legal advice. Ms Ní Bhriain is talking about the other aspect of it.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
In respect of Article 41.2, to backstop €150 billion with the European Union's public budget is a massive risk financially but it is also very unsound legally. There is no risk assessment and it means a massive injection of cash to produce weapons of war. Senator Higgins asked where will those weapons be used. Will they be used in Europe? Will they be used in Ireland? Will they used elsewhere in the Continent or will they be exported to cause war and conflict elsewhere?
I presume when the national plans come there will be agencies or financial entities that will give the money at that point, but I presume they cannot give the money now because they do not have enough information from those national plans. Between now and then if Ireland did want to make a stand, it could vote against this in the European Council.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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We had a huge amount of different submissions during the course of our call for submissions on these particular COM proposals. One of them was from the Centre of Full Employment and Equity. It focused on the fact that this debt financing model is unfit for purpose.
It literally said member states will be forced into fiscal austerity should the debt obligations incurred under the SAFE programme push the fiscal balance into the excessive deficit procedure. That is very interesting. Ms Ni Bhriain mentioned it. I assume the burden will fall on all member states if the debt cannot be repaid. Could Ms NÍ Bhriain comment on that? I will come to Ms Kinney about something else afterwards.
The concern relates to austerity. We have seen what austerity looks like. It means cutting essential public services. So many communities are still feeling the impact of austerity on this State. There is that aspect of things, but there are also more. It was either this committee or the budgetary oversight committee of the previous Dáil – I believe Senator Higgins was a member with me – that examined the issue of the fiscal rules. We very much pushed for amendments to fiscal rules for environmental purposes, and also purposes related to the likes of housing. Maybe Ms Kinney could come in on that. My understanding is that fiscal rules are based on local budgets rather than EU budgets, but we are discussing huge sums of money that will have an impact on debt. We are constantly being told we need to stick to the 3% rule. Where does that really leave us in the context in question?
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
Again, I refer to Poland as an example. It is the state getting the most money – €46 billion, more or less. If Poland cannot repay the €46 billion, the security for it will be the EU’s public budget. That necessarily means all member states have to contribute more in order to cover the debt. There is no other way around it; that is the way the fund has been built. Consider what will occur if Poland, Romania, France or another state defaults. In terms of its public finances, France is in a massive amount of debt at the moment. I would imagine that all the countries – I do not have the figures – already have a massive amount of debt, and they are now going to take on an even bigger amount to buy these weapons. However, it will fall to the EU to cover them if they default.
We already know what austerity looks like in Ireland. The Greeks already know what it looks like to be bailed out by the European Union and what that entails. For years on end, they have been repaying all the money. You are constantly on the back foot and you can never get ahead because you are weighed down by debt. In the most undemocratic process ever, we have approved a massive fund that will likely see Ireland incurring a massive amount of debt for weapons we might not ever see. I hope we do not, to be honest. Essentially, we are talking about Ireland paying for Poland’s weapons via the EU. There is a massive risk involved here.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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It is interesting because often when we have discussions on this, there is talk about financial risk. We have had ISIF representatives before this committee in relation to investing in, say, companies that are in occupied territories and things like that. Fundamentally, it always comes back to what the financial risk is. It always comes down to the question of whether the debt will be repaid because that is the way the market works. It is focused on financial risk. However, in the case under discussion, it seems there is a financial risk for countries like ours in signing up. Even considering our views on everything else, there seems to be a financial risk to this.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
It does not matter whether we sign up or not. By virtue of being an EU member state, we are in this. We do not even get a chance to opt in or opt out; we have to cover the cost if the other countries default. We have to contribute, as a net contributor, to the EU budget.
On the question of risk, I remember when we were in here looking at the Act in Support of Ammunition Production last year. A risk assessment was carried out but it involved the question of how we would ensure companies would not lose out, not the question of how the weapons would be used and who would be killed by them. It was a question of how we could ensure things would not be detrimental to the arms companies. There was actually a bailout clause included in the Act in Support of Ammunition Production. It was set up such that the risk was the Ukraine war ending, meaning the companies would not get the money. That is the logic. The risk is that a war ends. Surely we should all want wars to end. The logic is one of asking how we can make as much money as possible from this as quickly as possible. Even if you just note the timing, you will realise the €800 billion fund was announced precisely when Ukraine, Russia and the US were negotiating. We know now it was not a peace negotiation that led anywhere, but at the time we did not. The time the countries were coming together to begin a potential peace negotiation was exactly the moment the EU announced €800 billion for weapons. There is a financial risk but you have also to locate that in the broader context.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Of course. Considering that this is the finance committee and because we are constantly told financial risk is a reason things cannot be done, it is interesting that, in this case, things are being done while there is a financial risk.
I have a question for Ms Kinney. When Senator Higgins was out of the room, I mentioned how a good bit of work was done previously on fiscal rules by a committee we were members of. I mentioned how we argued strongly at the time that there should be a relaxation of fiscal rules for environmental causes because, if we are serious about the climate crisis, we must realise it will cost huge sums that would not really fit in with fiscal rules.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Preventative spending was the aim.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, preventative spending. I do not know whether Ms Kinney wants to comment on that. Earlier, she mentioned just transition funding being reallocated for the expenditure under discussion. In the last term of the EU Parliament, it was said the focus was on climate. Obviously, Ms Kinney would know better that me whether that was the case. The focus was always said to be on the climate. Now it seems to be on defence or militarisation, depending on what your point of view is. Are we already seen the outworkings of a shift from the climate approach to the new approach? Has she seen money earmarked for climate transition work used for military spending? What was worked on by Ms Kinney that has seen a cut? I am conscious of time so I will finish on that question.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
Excellent. We have definitely seen a shift at European policy level. I definitely saw genuine interest in and enthusiasm for the European Green Deal until two or three years ago. For us working in military decarbonisation, we saw real progress on a policy level that we were seeking to operationalise. This was on the understanding that it was the future and that we had evolved and understood our responsibilities, the thinking being that if we were to meet the goals of the European Green Deal, it would require a whole-society approach to decarbonisation, which must include militaries. That rhetoric feels very far away from where we are now. Decarbonisation feels so far down the list of priorities because operational effectiveness is what matters the most.
Even on a broader climate level, there is a real risk of watering down EU net zero and emissions reduction targets, which is deeply concerning. As was mentioned, the sense of speed and urgency that is being implied here is simply investment in short-term security. Who does this short-term security benefit, as has been covered very much already? What this will do in the long term is directly compromise long-term security on a multitude of levels, one of those levels being $264 billion a year in climate damages. It is a very large number so it bears repeating multiple times across this session. Then, on other levels, social cohesion is being cut within this very proposal.
I am based in England so I can speak on a UK level to the trend happening at the moment where you see cuts from governments across development and climate commitments, and that being redistributed directly into military budgets. In the UK we did this very explicitly. We cut development funding and put it straight into the military budget. This is definitely a trend we are seeing and why I was not hugely surprised to see these two proposals hand in hand, where you see climate funding and other socially beneficial funds being redistributed to military spending. It is a really key focus at the moment but it is such short-term thinking to not consider the full range of risks we are facing. If anything, we can learn a lot of militaries in their approach to risk management. I do not think any military ever considers the one risk that is ahead of it. There is a multitude of risks we are facing at any given time and it makes very little sense to directly funnel resources into policy that is directly contradictory to climate action and directly incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Gabhaim buíochas le Ms Kinney. I will allow for a very brief second round because I am conscious-----
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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It will be extremely brief. It is a follow-up to something Ms Kinney mentioned in her opening statement. It is worth confirming it. Ms Kinney mentioned the established research which shows that an increase in armaments availability does not contribute to peace. This might be obvious but we have been told this is necessary and preventative, that it is deterrence and has all these functions. Could Ms Kinney elaborate on that research? This is the argument that Frank Aiken made when promoting the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation treaty historically. He made the argument that arms create conflict. Could Ms Kinney confirm that this is not just an opinion but that the research has shown that an increase in military capacity and weaponry leads to an increase in military conflict? That is key because we have focused a lot on the piece around money being diverted but there is the second part of Ms Kinney's piece where she spoke about conflict creating huge emissions. It is not just that the money is being redirected out of this and into arms manufacturing. It is not just that arms manufacturing creates weapons but that it increases conflict and conflict contributes to climate change, as I understand from Ms Kinney's piece, and then climate breakdown, as we know, contributes in a negative loop towards conflict. Could Ms Kinney come back to that piece? It would be worth knowing where that research is coming from and how common it is.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
If you look historically, points of incredibly high military spending are not points of peace. A lot of work is done following periods like the Cold War to reduce military spending. As I said in my opening remarks, with the current projected pattern of global military spending at a rate that is exponentially rising at the moment, by 2035 we could stand at $6.6 trillion, which is nearly five times the level of the end of the Cold War. Military spending is rising dramatically now. We are facing the most violent conflict we have had since the Second World War. What we are in now is an arms race, ultimately. It is where we have ended up. We know from history that arms races are not productive. Peaceful times require interventions around disarmament and a real push towards multilateralism to be able to strengthen international trust in international institutions like the UN and other bodies which, we know from history, are the path to peace while a militarised response is not. The militarised mindset begets a militarised response. When we approach increasing conflict with an increasingly militarised response, we end up in a repeating cycle of a lack of investment in multilateralism and development, increased spending on arms and worsening climate impacts. You also do not have development so you are in an endless cycle.
Ireland has a history of being vocal for peace and disarmament. If you think about this as a cycle, there are states that can disrupt the cycle and there are states that can take a stance. This is a really key moment for Ireland to stand up and be one of those states.
Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent)
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Does Ms Kinney believe that some way Ireland could contribute to global security is by taking that kind of a stance in disrupting a dangerous cycle in that way?
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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We might wrap up on that if that is okay.
Ms Ellie Kinney:
Absolutely. Global security on an international level is the same as security on a real street-community level. Security is so much more than a militarised response and disruptions to arms races, stopping the cycle of an arms race, will benefit both international security and the people of Ireland and communities of the EU. I will leave it at that.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I call Ms Ní Bhriain briefly because we are running out of time.
Ms Niamh Ní Bhriain:
I would like to make one comment to finish up. The slogan for this SAFE fund is: "Buy more, buy better, buy together, buy European". There is going to be an awful lot of buying going on in the next while that will be backed against a European Union public budget. What is going on here today is really important, and also when we did the Act in Support of Ammunition Production. I participate in another European-wide network of people doing similar work and Ireland is the only country I am aware of that is actually tracking this stuff. The work that is happening in this committee is important not just for Ireland but also for other groups trying to dig into this a bit more in their own countries, contexts and parliaments. There is really important work going on at this committee and I am grateful for the invitation to participate here. Ireland can play a unique role and it is maybe a little bit like Ms Kinney said. We can be the state that stands up and says there is actually an alternative to war, arming up and militarising to the teeth. We know that is not going to end well. There is no correlation between an increase in military spending and an increase in security. It is the opposite. We know that and history has shown us that.
Ireland is in a unique position as a country that is not a military power - it is a neutral country - in that we would be the country that stands up. We can vote against these national plans at the European Council. We can do that. I do not think the Government will do that. I wish it would and I hope it does but if we do not do that, there are other things we can do. We can withdraw from the EU battle groups and PESCO and be the country that says there is an alternative to war, and we can have that place.
Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Iontach. Gabhaim buíochas libh agus le Ms Kinney as well.
I thank Ms Kinney for calling in to us. That concludes the joint committee's business in public session for today. The committee stands adjourned until we meet again on Wednesday, 1 October, when the committee will meet in private session at 2.30 p.m.