Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I find the Minister of State reasonable and responsive to the legislative proposals we have made to him in this area and others. The intention of getting the text right as an instrument of legislation is to enable procedures and administrative rules to be put in place to achieve the more general purposes of what people on all sides are aiming for. We cannot ignore the Forfás report of 2004 that acknowledged significant gaps of a legislative kind. Neither can we ignore reports that have come from those who have chosen to compare the Irish administrative system with systems in other countries. People are concerned by the increasing use of guns in murders in Ireland and one of the first things the public and professionals refer to is tracing the weapon. There will not be international moral compliance until we can trace that which we export to the final point of its use.

I find it unacceptable that we sometimes say our administrative system is as good as any other. In Africa 500,000 people a year die through the use of small arms and other such munitions. We have been assured that the notion of dual use will protect us but this is just an administratively clever and evasive piece of casuistry.

The purpose of this Act should be to ensure a level of compliance that sees no advantage in export earnings will take precedence over the arrival of an instrument of death in a person's hands. Ireland is not guilty when it comes to light weapons but partner countries in the European Union are. The response to learning of the existence of up to 250,000 child soldiers was to lighten the weapons children would carry rather than eliminate the weapons or remove the children from this appalling industry of death. Scientists were hired to use new materials that could lighten weapons to allow children of seven, eight and nine years of age carry them. Any person who went to Africa to examine recovered weapons has seen that this is what happened.

How does this happen? It happens because the income from this trade of death is deemed more important than the moral leap needed to ensure that nothing a company or country makes or exports will contribute to the trade. I am not speaking abstractly; the earnings of the armaments industry are 15 times the combined level of aid on the planet. There are many wonderful programmes that are supported by Members on all sides of this House, such as those relating to world millennium development goals and so on but these programmes are dwarfed by the earnings of the armaments industry. The industry thrives not only on sloppy and inefficient arrangements but on arrangements that exist solely to make money. Many European countries make a significant income from the blood of fellow inhabitants of our planet.

I do not want to go on too long because I spoke on this topic on Second Stage. The Minister received an assurance from the Attorney General on the wording of the Bill but similar matters arise in legislation we will come to later, the Immigration, Residence and Protection Bill. People have tried to argue that the function of the Oireachtas is to rubber-stamp what has been agreed in an Executive sense. I do not hold that view and I do not attribute it to everyone in this House but legislation must always be sufficient to ensure the administrative practice suggested by my colleague, Deputy Penrose, is achievable. We need an assurance on this. For example, the Irish Government should decide on end-use certification in a way that considerably enhances and changes its dual use interpretation. If we are assured of this the legislation will be fine. Amendments Nos. 1, 4, 5 and 6 only sought to ensure there would be an explicit reference in the legislation to make this possible for the purposes I mentioned now on Report Stage but discussed more fully on Second Stage.

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