Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

I wish to talk in particular about the issue of military flights using Shannon Airport and flying over our airspace. It is something I and others are very concerned about because successive Irish Governments have long claimed the defence of plausible deniability in relation to this. To say we did not know because we did not ask is no longer acceptable. We have already had the Irish Government facilitating the landing of US military flights on Irish soil and some of these military flights have been facilitating the destruction of Gaza and the elimination of the Palestinian people. By allowing military planes to land in Shannon Airport on their way to aid the atrocities in Gaza we are complicit and we are profiting from war crimes.

Ireland has been very strong on this issue but strong words must be supported by strong, consistent actions and we must control what we can control and we can control who uses our airspace and lands in our airports. Planes have landed in Shannon Airport that frankly should not have. A new inspection regime was meant to have been introduced to deal with this. Why is the Department of Transport still examining this legislation?

For example, it was reported in The Ditch that a cargo plane that regularly brings tonnes to weapons to Israel touched down in Shannon Airport as recently as March of this year when on its way to Tel Aviv. The same outlet also reported that the same airline, Silk Way Airlines, illegally transported munitions to Israel through Irish territory. This is illegal. We need transparency and accountability here. This is something we can control. We need a solid, transparent and consistent inspection method to be implemented immediately. The fact is that the Government is doing nothing about this. It is not checking so therefore it is not finding. This is completely unacceptable. We cannot stay silent about Shannon Airport when our country and our State's strategic assets are being used to facilitate this. This goes against everything we have ever stood for.

That is why we must act. Act to stop the illegal use of Shannon Airport and act to seek a UN peacekeeping force to act as a literal barrier between the Palestinian people and their annihilation and extermination because this is a moment in history like Darfur, like Rwanda and like what the international community has been much better at calling out in Ukraine. This is a defining moment; a moment that will sear our very souls. What sort of a society are we if we gloss over and scroll past the hollowed out faces and lifeless eyes of the Palestinian children? If this really is, as the Tánaiste says "evil beyond words", we need to do more.

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