Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I find that the description of this Bill as technical is not correct. This is not a technical Bill; it is an extremely important Bill that ostensibly seeks to protect human rights, to prevent arms falling into the wrong hands and to have peace and stability. Who could be against that?

Many of the things I wanted to say have already been said by Deputy Boyd Barrett. I agree with everything he said but I might put it slightly differently than he. It is unfortunate that there is no pre-legislative scrutiny report. I would have liked such a report. I know there were presentations and I have the opening statement that was given to the Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade and Employment and it was satisfied. I understand how difficult the work of committees is but ethics come into this, and ethics have been mentioned by one or two Deputies. Where is the forum for discussing the ethics of what we are talking about here? I would have thought the pre-legislative scrutiny in the committee would have been the time to tease out what we are doing in terms of the new legislation we are bringing in, which we have no choice on, and I will come back to that. I mention the implications of that and which countries we are singling out and which other countries we are not singling out and so forth. I do not see the word "ethics" mentioned anywhere. There was a golden opportunity lost there. That is brought home to me all the more because the end of the opening statement that was given on 29 September 2021 states:

The Department has been engaging with the Office of the Attorney General including the office of the Parliamentary Counsel on the drafting of the Bill. Important legal questions have arisen and are being systematically addressed, for example, on the unique interplay between national and EU competence in EU export controls and the mechanism for handling appeals.

This is at the end of that statement, telling us that important legal questions have arisen. I would say that important ethical questions have arisen as well and that has not been discussed anywhere.

I thank the Minister of State and the Department for their work. Clearly a tremendous amount of work has gone into this. It has taken a huge effort for me to try to understand what is here, what we are doing and then to articulate it. It is a fairly substantial Bill. There is so much in it; I would like to focus but it is difficult for me. The Bill has eight Parts and 74 sections and there is a Bill digest once again. I pay tribute to the Oireachtas Library and Research Service for the Bill digest; I do not know what we would do without it.

Many Deputies have acknowledged that the purpose of the Bill is good. It seeks to control the export of dual-purpose products and goods. That is not our competence anymore; it is the competence of the EU. What we have to follow is the regulation that had direct effect in this country. We are allowed a tiny bit of latitude into the type of legislation we bring forward in order to bring more openness and accountability into that process. Parallel with that, we have the export of military goods from Ireland, which - thanks be to God - still theoretically lies within our competence. That is good, theoretically, and I welcome all of that. Then I go back and look at the reports. In addition to there being no pre-legislative scrutiny, the regulatory impact analysis has also not been published. This happened last week as well with another Bill but in fairness to the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins, he came back and told me it has now been published. It was brought to my attention that when I spoke on the Construction Safety Licensing Bill 2023, we had a note from the Oireachtas Library and Research Service and we have a similar note that the Department kindly made the regulatory impact analysis available. It did so out of kindness but that note was not to be given out; it was just for the purpose of Deputies reading it. We received that exact same note today, which is particularly worrying, even though there is an onus on each Department to publish those analyses. In the international monitoring of Ireland we get good marks for producing the regulatory impact analysis reports. We regularly produce them but we do not get the top marks for the quality of those reports or for their publication. The Minister of State might have a look at that.

In saying that I am particularly conscious of the report under the existing Control of the Exports Act 2008, which will be amended. This report is on the period from 1 January 2021 to December 2021. There is no report for 2022 yet, even though we are five months into 2023. I read somewhere that there is an onus on the Department to produce the report as soon as possible but we have no report for 2022, so we are speaking on the existing legislation in a vacuum. When I look at the introduction by the Taoiseach, who was a Deputy and the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment at the time, it states: "This report underpins the commitment to openness and transparency" and it continues: "We are deeply committed to preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, to supporting regional security and stability, to preventing terrorism and to protecting human rights." Who could be against that? Deputy Varadkar was talking about openness and transparency and providing a robust framework with this new Bill. I would think the first basic step in doing that would be to have the regulatory impact analysis published.

Deputy Jim O'Callaghan already mentioned secret appeals. How can we learn from that? On the Bill, I would use the word "surreal" as well. This is an experience in surrealism for me because we are seeking to control the export of dual-use goods and services and military items in an open and transparent way with a Bill that does not allow for openness and transparency. That is because in addition to the appeals system, which is secret, we have commercially sensitive reasons given. Everything is given in an overall package and we cannot really see what is happening.

What is published is also interesting. Some eight or ten criteria must be taken into account and one of those is on Europe's attitude to countries and whether restrictions are in operation. In this report, we are told that 20 countries are subject to sanctions.

What is interesting about that is that one of them is Libya and another one is Turkey and yet we have done deals with these countries to outsource our responsibility for refugees. As well as what is included here being interesting, what is also interesting is the countries that are not included. Israel and Saudi Arabia are not included. Interestingly, Yemen, a country that is being destroyed by the arms industry through Saudi Arabia and other countries, is included and faces restrictions. We read a report on two levels: by reference to what is in it and by reference to what is not.

There is a very interesting use of words in the briefing document, for which I again thank the Minister of State because I appreciate getting briefing notes. They are very helpful. On page 2, we are told that the list of military items subject to export control is set out in the common military list of the EU. I understand that, under this legislation, we are now going to have our own list. Will the Minister of State clarify that? Will that list be public? I believe that is part of this legislation. The next bullet point tells us that Ireland does not have an arms industry per se. That is an interesting use of language. It states that military exports from Ireland are predominantly ICT components and mechanical devices of military standard.

In a very interesting article way back in April 2022, Conor Gallagher focused on one company that is doing very well. It is a tech start-up and is making software, which he points out is "of great interest to militaries, namely sophisticated virtual reality training software." It is very useful stuff that allows offshore wind engineers to fix turbine blades hundreds of feet in the air, allows peacekeepers to spot landmines and so on. It is one of hundreds of such companies. The Minister of State might have the up-to-date figures. I believe there are more than 500 companies in this country exporting dual-use components. This article is very good in a sense because it zones in on a very good start-up company and how well it is doing but it also shows how this technology can be used for other purposes. Mr. Gallagher goes on to point out that the co-founder and director of that particular company, a former cavalry officer who also set up the Irish Defence and Security Association, talked about ethics. I will go back to what I said. Where is the forum for discussing ethics with regard to this legislation?

According to this article, despite the pandemic, 476 dual-use export licences were issued in 2020. The number has increased each year. I do not have the 2022 figures but I have the figures for 2021 in a report. The figures are increasing every single year. There were 530 individual dual-use licences issued in 2021, an increase of 11%.

We are bringing in legislation to monitor, to control and to introduce a more effective and dissuasive penalty system. Where is the information as to how many offences were committed under the existing Act? Where do I find that information? How many prosecutions were taken? If there were not criminal prosecutions, how many civil actions were taken in this regard? I would like to know that type of information. I appreciate that we have clear obligations under European law and I understand that the regulation had direct effect but, to analyse this properly, we need the maximum of information. To be told that something is commercially sensitive is not helpful as regards openness and accountability. I sat in the Chair this morning and various Deputies asked about openness and accountability and how we are committed to those principles with regard to some international body. This is one area where we need openness and accountability in what we are doing.

Of course, we are bringing this legislation in at a time when Ursula von der Leyen is making a mockery of peace as she talks about increasing the amount of our money going to the arms industry, the military-industrial complex that makes the world less safe, and fosters a mentality of "them and us". There are those of us inside the garden within the jungle. As an island, Ireland is just about in there. We are inside the lovely garden Josep Borrell describes while outside the garden is the jungle. We have friends and it is okay to export arms to them. We are okay to talk to Israel, notwithstanding that Amnesty has said it is operating an apartheid regime. However, we do not talk about that because Israel is our friend. Saudi Arabia is a semi-friend so we are very careful there as well. However, we will use words that demonise countries when it suits the narrative. I have great difficulty with that.

The invasion of Ukraine was wrong, unacceptable and illegal but the failures to deal with other invasions, such as the repeated invasions, both open and surreptitious, carried out by America and those carried out by other countries, and our failure to deal with Israel's warmongering and being told we are anti-Semitic if we speak out are utterly frightening to me. Ireland has a primary role as a voice for peace given our neutral status. That status is slowly being taken from us, however. More and more, we are adopting a consensus mentality and demonising anyone who does not share it and labelling them as not our friends. We lose that independent voice at our peril. In the context of a later debate today, I was looking at Article 5 of the Constitution, which describes us as "a sovereign, independent, democratic state." We joined with Europe - and I am a committed European - for lots of reasons. The direction in which it is going is backing up a military-industrial complex and making the world less safe. It is adopting a neoliberal approach and ideology that is leading to more consumption and imperilling the planet. That is not my Europe. I do not believe it is the Europe the majority of Irish people want.

I will go back to the specific topic under discussion. It is hypocritical, surreal and, as Deputy Boyd Barrett said, Orwellian that we are looking at controlling this in a little bubble while not looking at the bigger bubble in which the military-industrial complex is gaining enormous power with our money. As an elected Deputy, it is impossible for me to follow the change in language. We now talk about peace enforcement and peacekeeping facilities. We train the Ukrainian soldiers over in Cyprus but say this does not breach our neutrality. I will stand here and say that we should give all possible humanitarian assistance to the people of Ukraine but, as a neutral country, we have a separate role. We should be a very active neutral country and say that we need this war to stop, that we need to look at the military-industrial complex and that we need to look at what we are doing in Ireland with more and more companies producing dual-use components and the Government producing a list of military items it is okay to export without any ethical discussion and without controls.

I looked in vain to see when the last site inspection under the previous legislation was carried out. There had been none because of the Covid pandemic. I do not know what site inspections involve but I am told those that took place during the pandemic were virtual. That is understandable to a point although I would have thought it would be possible to wear protective gear and get around that. How many site inspections have taken place? What problems have arisen with the existing legislation, which we are now repealing? How do we learn from it? Are there enough staff in place to monitor what we are now putting through in this legislation? There is talk about an internal compliance statement from companies. What does that mean? Where will that be seen?

I understand that many small and medium enterprises are struggling to understand their obligations. I fully understand that. I am struggling here myself despite having read all of this material. I understand the Government has taken some action to try to explain the provisions to such companies. However, the bigger question is where are we going in providing taxpayers' money to start-up companies producing dual-purpose goods.

A question relating to research and development raised by Deputy Catherine Murphy caught my attention. How are we monitoring how that is going? How much time, money and effort is going into a particular type of research that will aid the military-industrial complex and that will still allow us to call ourselves neutral? I want thriving small businesses and a thriving country. I also want a questioning democracy that looks at our part in the global military-industrial complex that is killing innocent people on the ground, even as I speak, in Palestine. The bigger ethical discussion has not taken place at all, notwithstanding the Department's effort. Of course, it is not for the Department to do the ethical discussion. It is for us and the Oireachtas committees. Unfortunately, it has not taken place.

I have serious questions about the surreal nature of what the Government is doing, albeit to comply with our European obligations. If we have to do this, the least we might do is make it as open and accountable as possible. Will the military list be published? What type of inspections will take place? How does that happen? We know about the issue of health and safety in meat plants, and the problems there were as regards lack of staff and how work was carried out. This issue is far more complex and equally as serious, yet I have no idea how that will be done.

A review of how this Bill is operating, within a reasonable period, should be built into the text as a matter of urgency. I could pick a time out of the sky, but an absolute review of the Bill should be conducted within a reasonable period, in addition to providing an explanation of why the regulatory impact has not been published. Why is there such a delay in publishing the reports? Why do we not have a report for 2022? Why was the report for 2021 on this very important issue not published for a full year after it was completed?

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