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

The difficulty that the Minister of State has not addressed is how his Department knows the products will be put to commercial rather than military use. There are no such questions on the forms; in fact, the Department asks for the form to be filled out in layman's terms to a maximum of 250 characters. It does not address the issue that arose in Britain of front companies setting themselves up as end users of dual-use items. What checking is done by the Department in evaluating the applications? Let us face it - we do not really have top-notch intelligence and we know of examples from Britain of exports to companies in Syria that were clearly front companies, even though the applications seemed worthy.

When exporting to certain countries from Ireland, an end-use certificate is required for dual-use items, which is much more strict than usual. Syria is on the list of these countries, yet Saudi Arabia and Israel are not. How could the Minister of State possibly explain the different criteria? They suggest there is no problem whatsoever in exporting to Israel or Saudi Arabia.

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