Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)

Based on my personal experience and the work I did as a chemical technologist before entering the Dáil, phosphorous is the dirtiest and nastiest chemical one can use in a laboratory. If it gets on one's finger the only remedy is to have the skin surrounding the affected area excised. The Minister referred to the CWC, to which the United States is a signatory. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons has said that used as an illumination the phosphorous is not in contravention of that convention. However, the Minister did not indicate other data in the convention to the effect that expert opinion is that if used as a weapon to flush out insurgents, for instance, or people occupying entrenched positions, it is in contravention of the CWC.

The Minister referred earlier to the security analyst, Mr. Tom Clonan, as justification for a previous argument he made. In his article in The Irish Times of 17 November, Mr. Clonan said, as regards American marines, that each of them has the use of high specification goggles in night time warfare and that there is no need for illuminations in battle situations. He says this unusual deployment of illumination rounds for detonation within buildings leaves the US military open to the accusation that white phosphorous was being used as a chemical or terror weapon in Fallujah. I put it to the Minister that there is a major question mark as regards the use of this chemical. It is a weapon I would describe as being "on the edge" of civilised behaviour. The Minister should think again on this issue, and think hard, because there is a contravention of the convention in this case.

See this speech in context