Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Dick Roche. I am pleased to speak on Second Stage of the Prohibition of Depleted Uranium Weapons Bill 2009. This legislation touches on one of Fine Gael's general principles — its opposition to the use of weapons that cause long-term health and environmental side effects for non-combatants, possibly generations after a conflict has ended. The Minister of State's constituency colleague, Deputy Billy Timmins, introduced the cluster munitions Bill in Dáil Éireann in 2008 to ban the use of cluster munitions. He opposed them because he had seen their effects first hand when serving as an Army officer on United Nations peace support missions. It was a principle for him and for the Fine Gael Party. This Bill aims to achieve the same effect with depleted uranium weapons, which we welcome.

Some question the value of Ireland taking a stand on depleted uranium, just as we took a stand on cluster munitions. They fail to understand the point we in the Oireachtas, on behalf of the people, are making. This is not an issue of practice but of principle, of right and wrong. The Oireachtas is unambiguously stating the use of depleted uranium is wrong, immoral and unacceptable. We are committing ourselves never to use them, never to facilitate their use and never to support their use.

Critics of a ban, of which there are many in the military in the United States and the United Kingdom, claim there is no proof that using depleted uranium weaponry causes long-term damage, citing World Health Organization reports. The problem with their argument, and those reports, is that they are demanding something that is almost impossible to prove. While Japan voted in favour of the Indonesian UN motion against depleted uranium weapons, it noted no definite conclusions on the issue have been drawn from scientific studies.

In war, scientific controls to measure cause and effect are not possible. One cannot do laboratory conditions on a battlefield. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, however. There is clear evidence of the lingering effects of weapons used on the health both of combatants and of those who lived in the area of combat.

In Iraq, where depleted uranium weapons were used in both Gulf Wars, there were 11 cases of cancer per 100,000 people in Basra in 1989. In 2001, there were 116 per 100,000. In 1988, 34 people died of cancer, in 1998, 450, and in 2001, 603. Forty-nine babies with severe congenital malformations were born in Basra between 1995 and 1998; and 224 between 1999 and 2001. Nearly a quarter of babies born at Basra's teaching hospital in 2002 had some form of malformation. The increase in leukaemia in the area around Basra was the first health development noticed by the medical profession following the first Gulf War. Similar statistics could be quoted for other war zones where depleted uranium was used. The effects on soldiers were also striking. The research advisory committee on Gulf War veterans' illnesses in 2004 advised the US Department of Defense:

More than 13 years after the end of Operation Desert Storm, a substantial proportion of veterans of the 1990-1991 Gulf War continue to experience chronic and often debilitating conditions characterised by persistent headaches, cognitive problems, somatic pain, fatigue, gastrointestinal difficulties, respiratory conditions, and skin abnormalities.

It concluded:

A substantial proportion of Gulf War veterans are ill with multi-symptom conditions not explained by wartime stress or psychiatric illness … A growing body of research indicates that an important component of Gulf War veterans' illnesses is neurological in character.

Soldiers were given a cocktail of drugs and tablets supposedly to protect themselves yet ordinary Iraqis did not get any, yet both groups still suffered ill effects. Both have one factor in common — contact with depleted uranium.

The irony was that both Gulf Wars and other wars in which depleted uranium was used were officially described as wars of liberation, freedom and ending tyranny. Is there any greater tyranny than to leave those liberated to suffer the chronic health effects of the weapons used in their liberation for decades after the war ends? Is there any greater irony than, in the name of freedom, to destroy the lives of future generations of young people who will not be able to experience that freedom because of these weapons?

In 2003, Professor Brian Spratt, chairman of Britain's prestigious Royal Society's working group on depleted uranium, said, "It is highly unsatisfactory to deploy a large amount of a material that is weakly radioactive and chemically toxic without knowing how much soldiers and civilians have been exposed to it". I would go further. It is not just highly unsatisfactory but wrong, immoral and unacceptable. It must be stopped.

We have heard about weapons of mass destruction. Cluster munitions and depleted uranium weapons are weapons of indiscriminate effect, killing and maiming for years after a war has ended. They create a war without end.

I commend the Green Party for presenting the Bill. I hope this is the start of the Government's support in banning depleted uranium weapons which are causing so much destruction across the world. I also hope the banning of such weapons will be progressed in the United Nations.