Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The growth of criminal gangs operating out of this jurisdiction is a phenomenon that has developed incredible legs in recent decades. The reach of these criminal gangs goes well beyond our borders and the scale now rivals some of the biggest international cartels we have read about in other jurisdictions down through the decades, such as the Mafia or criminal cartels operating out of Mexico and countries in South America. We need to take action against that and one of the things that needs to be absolutely crystal clear is that there is no safe haven for those criminal overlords who can direct their criminal enterprises from the safety of another jurisdiction and cause mayhem and carnage among our population and many other populations, because the harm they do is certainly international.

I welcome the efforts of the Government to ensure there are no safe havens, certainly none criminals want to go to. Ultimately, if the only places left for these people to go are places like Russia and North Korea, that would be a desirable objective. It is certainly galling for our law agents to look at and know that godfathers of crime who have caused mayhem in this State are able to enjoy themselves in luxury in jurisdictions such as the UAE. We need to close down those safe havens. There is no doubt about that. I commend the growing co-operation between An Garda Síochána, Interpol and other international police forces. The co-operation with the FBI in the United States is of extreme importance, because of its capacity and reach in working with us. I also welcome the appointment of Garda liaison officers who are on the ground in a number of jurisdictions now. I would be interested in hearing from the Minister how she intends to develop all of that.

Having said that, we have to be careful in any international treaty on extradition to fundamentally safeguard human rights. It is a cornerstone of what we believe in. The Minister has recited in her speech today, and in the briefing note we received, the safeguards she has written into the treaty to protect against cruel and unusual treatment, torture and anyone who could face a death penalty. None of that could be tolerated. Reasonable points were made by my Sinn Féin colleague about conditions operating in the UAE and we would welcome hearing more views on that.

I only have a few minutes and I want to make one other point. There is growing co-operation between Ireland and the UAE, which I welcome, but we need to use our influence with the UAE on other matters. A cause of enormous concern now is the ongoing carnage in Sudan. It is almost overshadowed because there are so many other terrible things happening. For a little more than a year, Sudan has been the site of probably the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. We rightly focus on Gaza and the genocide that is happening there, but Sudan is on the brink of the worst famine in the world. According to the UN refugee agency, more than 7 million people have been internally displaced and 2 million have fled to neighbouring countries. Half the population of Sudan, 25 million people, are in dire need of humanitarian assistance now and 20,000 people have been killed. The biggest supplier of arms to that conflict according to the UN is the UAE, which has its own interests in these matters. I do not have time to develop the point any further, other than to say, that I hope that in our growing co-operation with the UAE we will seek to appeal to them to stop the support in arms and other military equipment to the warring factions because peace is so far away in Sudan right now and literally millions of people are on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe.

While we rightly focus on Lebanon, Gaza and Ukraine, that catastrophe could outstrip them all in terms of the harm it is doing to human beings.

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