Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to pick up on the comment about seismic change that the previous speaker referred to. We were warned about this for a very long time. When climate change was declared as being real, we were told that the model of business as usual could not continue. We failed to take on that warning. Then we had Covid and we continued on with the same business model. Then, more than ten years ago, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council told us we were too reliant on particular sectors and a small number of companies. We have had any amount of warnings. I am not here to say that, but the point remains that we were supposed to have had transformative action. We should never be in this position.

We are dealing with a dangerous - I could use many other adjectives but I will not - person who has the title of President of the United States. He is backing the genocide in Gaza. I will mention this every single time I stand up. The US is supplying all of the arms to perpetrate the genocide, while we stand idly by. This is the same man who has now started a trade war so that we are completely deflected from what is happening. Of course the Government has to take action and look at this, but we need long-term action. We need transformative action. We should never be in this position but we should learn from it, having failed to learn from Covid and climate change. We should diversify our economy. I see for the first time that Údarás na Gaeltachta recognises the need to diversify in the markets. It is now looking to Canada and elsewhere to sell its products. This should have been happening not just with an t-údarás, but with Enterprise Ireland and the IDA as well. We built up a reliance that is utterly unacceptable. Now that we have this crisis all over the world, we see Germany reigniting its economy through the arms industry. We see Ireland putting out what is known as preliminary market engagement exercise for drones or platforms, for ostensibly useful functions. Then it goes on to question whether they can be modified to seamlessly deliver a strike capability. They want the responses back to testing the market to see if that is possible.

Ireland's sale of dual-use products has increased by a factor of seven times, I think. The Minister of State knows this. I will work with the Government at any time if it will begin to say that we cannot go on with business as usual. It is simply not possible. Our planet is endangered. The clock has moved forward and we are now utterly reliant on an arms industry because the leaders of the European economy have utterly failed to behave in an intelligent manner. They have gone down roads that have not helped us - I mention Germany in particular - with the arms industry. We are doing all of this without having an action plan for business and human rights. I could be corrected on this but I think we have been more than five years without a human rights plan because we cannot get all of the Departments to co-operate on it. I welcome the setting up of the forum known as the consultative group on international trade policy. I do not think Údarás na Gaeltachta is part of this, even though it sends €150 million to North America in exports. I agree with what the previous speaker said about a forum but we need an urgent task force to diversify our economy and to have balanced regional development. We cannot even attempt to do that because we do not have basic infrastructure, like a sewage treatment plant in Carraroe or one on the east side of Galway city, one of the five cities destined to grow. We are going in one direction all the time to save industries, which we need to save at this point because we are utterly reliant on them, without a parallel approach that will help us to break our dependency.

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