Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

There is a bit of "Here we go again" with yet another criminal justice provision. It is getting tiresome and repetitive. It reminds me of the slogan, "No justice, no peace". We would be better off spending our time examining the conditions that gave rise to international terrorism and destabilisation, the break-up of areas like the Middle East and the role of Western imperialism therein than spending it on an even greater securitisation of the EU. We would also be better off discussing mutual assistance across the EU, for example, in debt write-downs and in solidarity with the ordinary people of Greece and Italy on whose shores have been landed tens of thousands of refugees of whom other European states have failed to accept their equal share. I am not interested in the type of mutual assistance that has seen the British Government co-operating with the Swedish Government and American authorities in the incarceration of Mr. Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for more than three years. He has played a key role internationally in highlighting the nature of modern surveillance, including surveillance of the past three French Prime Ministers and so on, and in exposing the role of Shannon Airport in the US military machine, as Deputy Wallace stated.

This Bill is another part of the securitisation of Europe. The Part 7A to be inserted by it includes provisions on enhancing the operation of special intervention units in so-called crisis situations. This stems from a 2008 European Council decision and is an instrument that we are told is aimed at improving co-operation between member states' special intervention units in man-made crises that present a serious and direct physical threat, such as a terrorist incident. Of course, this could also mean an outpouring of civil unrest. Let us be clear, in that special intervention units in the old Hollywood era were elite police forces, but the legislation calls them paramilitary police units that assist under Article 18 of the Prüm decision with policing mass gatherings and similar major events, disasters and serious accidents. The Council decision to which this Bill gives legislative effect complements and extends the provisions of the Prüm decision and allows for forms of police assistance between member states through special intervention units in other situations, namely, crises presenting a serious physical threat to persons, property, infrastructure or institutions, for example, hostage taking. Obviously, no one will object to a bunch of paramilitary units rescuing hostages, but we must be careful. Paramilitary units are neither police nor army. They are an amalgam of both. Our State has experienced difficulties with a civilian police force and a lack of accountability. How much worse would that be when dealing with military and paramilitary aspects?

In a European context, these special units operate transnationally under the umbrella of the ATLAS Network, which was set up following the September 11 attacks. That network works under the supervision of and is financed by the European Commission's Directorate General of Migration and Home Affairs, but neither the Commission nor the directorate is democratically elected. As such, the ATLAS Network is not accountable to anyone for its activities.

The terrorist attacks in the US and Europe in the years since 2001 have led to the relentless focus on international terrorism that we are fond of hearing about. The so-called new security agenda has gone hand in hand with that. It has been a strong driver of the reorganisation of police institutions in many countries. As sociology Professor Mathieu Deflem stated: " ...as terrorism is conceived as war-like behaviour and is responded to by military actions, it brings up the problem of a potential militarisation of the police." There are many reasons to be wary of this, the most obvious being that, in everyday life in Ireland and most of Europe, we are not living in a combat zone. We should not invite combat-ready militants into our midst. Unfortunately, that is what the ATLAS Network is. Professor Robert Warren called it a pop-up army that was mobilised transnationally to pre-emptively militarise cities facing major demonstrations.

Our special intervention unit, the Emergency Response Unit, was pulled in to help with the G8 Summit in Fermanagh in 2013, which saw a major lockdown of citizens' democratic movements. When the G7 Summit took place in Brussels last year, Belgium's special intervention unit, the CGSU, sat on top of President Barack Obama's hotel, snipers at the ready. During the visit of the Queen and President Obama to Ireland in 2011, we had a lockdown of this city. Although the Government had to get rid of many of the emergency GMC-Sierra barriers that it had bought, it was ridiculous when the Dáil was locked down last winter. According to a 2013 Irish Independentarticle about the Emergency Response Unit in 2013, it was deployed on more than 100 VIP duties per year. Heavily armed and State-funded paramilitary police units are being deployed to protect VIPs. There is something untoward about that. The idea that the EU would have a transnational paramilitary force is even worse. It is what Professor Stephen Graham called the "startling militarisation of civil society – the extension of military ideas of tracking, identification and targeting into the quotidian spaces of everyday life". He also wrote:

It leads to the creeping and insidious diffusion of militarised debates about "security" in every walk of life. Together, once again, these work to bring essentially military ideas of the prosecution of, and preparation for, war into the heart of ordinary, day-to day city life.

Security trumps everything. On Monday, Deputy Wallace, a number of cross-party Deputies and I visited Maghaberry Prison where we considered issues like improving prisoner conditions and welfare, but we were met with the barrier of security in respect of some of those. Making a heavily militarised transnational network of police normal, which process this Bill forms part of, is just one element in a relentless securitisation of our lives. We see it in increasingly sophisticated border controls, biometrics, mass data collection, surveillance, brutal crackdowns on protests, sinister fringes at home, etc. It is a worrying trend in terms of the erosion of human rights, as states of security exception rapidly become states of everyday normality. We saw that with the riot police in Greece who were deployed at protests en massein 2010 but who, two years later, were standing guard on street corners in Athens every day of the week. We saw 3,000 armed police officers bring Athens to a standstill last March as students from hundreds of schools took part in a parade. We see it in Spain's new gag law, which effectively outlaws protests on pain of €600,000 fines. We saw it in the lockdown of our cities. This is not healthy.

This debate is feeding into a security industry across Europe. We have security fairs with names like Counter Terror Expo and Infosecurity Europe where government representatives rub cheeks with the private security industry, each selling its wares to the other. Information exchange does not just happen between the special intervention units of the EU. Israeli expertise is being used.

While the particular provisions of this Bill do not explicitly relate to protest, I think there is an overlap there. It is a further extension of a security state and a further normalisation of a discourse of constant war. In my view, this is as dangerous as it is at odds with reality.

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