Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The principle of competitive tendering for Government contracts is used by the Department of Defence for the acquisition of defensive equipment for the Defence Forces. This is an EU law requirement in accordance with the defence and security directive. Central to those procedures is the requirement to allow fair competition between suppliers through the submission of tenders following advertising of the tender competition on the eTenders site and on the Official Journal of the European Union, where appropriate. Such tender competitions are open to any company or country, subject to the terms of all UN, OSCE and EU arms embargoes or restrictions. There are no such restrictions or embargoes in place on Israel or Israeli companies at the moment.

I am advised the Department of Defence has purchased defensive equipment from Israeli companies as set out in value terms in the following table. The expenditure primarily relates to ground surveillance radars, engineering equipment, fire control systems and the upgrade of the unmanned aerial vehicles operated by the Defence Forces. During this period no equipment has been purchased directly from the State of Israel. However, in 2021, engineering, or non-lethal, equipment was purchased from Israeli Military Industries, which is understood to be wholly owned by the State of Israel.

The expenditure on equipment that came from Israeli companies is as follows:

Year	Expenditure
2019	€646,070
2020	€486,700
2021	€667,194
2022	NIL

In expenditure terms, these are relatively small amounts of money for non-lethal equipment, mainly in the protective and information space from an engineering perspective, such as fire control systems, surveillance radar systems and so on.

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