Dáil debates

Tuesday, 8 December 2020

Ceisteanna - Questions

Cabinet Committees

3:55 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Garda Síochána is currently engaged in a joint EU-funded research programme called real time network, text and speaker analytics for combating organised crime, ROXANNE. The programme has been in place since September 2019 and runs to August 2022. Among the participants on this programme is the Israeli Ministry of Public Security, which oversees the Israeli prison service, police, border control and so on. It has been involved and implicated in repeated, terrible human rights abuses of Palestinians, including many children, administrative detention, detention of children without trial and many other human rights abuses that have recently been documented by, among others, the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign in a report it produced in August. The latter has written to the Minister for Justice. I submitted a parliamentary question that was ruled out of order asking what on earth the Garda Síochána is doing. The Garda has, as part of its code of ethics, specific and clear commitments to human rights and yet is partnering with an Israeli body that is deeply implicated in human rights abuses.

I put to the Taoiseach that we should have no hand or part in a project involving the Israeli Ministry of Public Security. Indeed, we should be suggesting that the EU, which is supposed to respect human rights, should have nothing whatsoever to do with such a project if the Israeli Ministry of Public Security is involved.

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