Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Obviously, we understand that the SatCom project, which we are being asked to sign up to in this motion, has a variety of uses. It will involve a pay per use of the system for defence forces in the field. However, as part of that debate it would be wrong not to look at the EU satellite technology and to highlight the use of satellites and satellite data transmission as part of Europe's increasingly high-tech and militaristic defence of its borders against migrants. However, this is not benign technology. There is something deeply disturbing about the EU using its enormous power to train satellite surveillance on refugees from war-torn and impoverished states trying to cross its borders. It is chilling. It is not cheap either. The European Commission agreed in 2015 to provide €47 million to Frontex for satellite services dedicated to border surveillance. In total, more than €6 billion from the EU budget and a similar amount from national budgets is to be spent up to 2020 on border surveillance technology, including satellite surveillance. Data from all these technologies are fed into Frontex's situation room and the idea is that they would form real-time surveillance of Europe's borders to protect it against a non-existent threat from desperate people trying to get to Europe's shores. All of this is being done at the behest of the arms companies which provided this technology in the first place, the same arms companies which benefited and profited from the disruption and war in those countries which led to the people becoming refugees in the first place. While the close relationship between the arms industry and EU's governance structure is not new, we know, for example, that the defence industry was heavily involved with the European convention tasked with establishing the EU constitution and so on. All of this is set to get worse. The Government would be better off spending that money giving our soldiers decent pay and conditions, rather than wasting it on this offensive measure.

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