Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I give my wholehearted support and that of the Labour Party to the Bill. It is very welcome and all who have spoken have endorsed it. The Minister set out clearly the impetus behind the Bill and set it in the context of international humanitarian law more generally and in the context of a climate where we are seeing increasing recognition of the need to ensure accountability in the international forum for international crimes, notably through the mechanism of the International Criminal Court.

The Bill is topical. Others have commented on recent armed conflicts involving appalling destructions of property and cultural heritage. I will return to that. I very much welcome the substance of the Bill, based as it is on the convention. I particularly welcome the extension of extraterritorial jurisdiction over Irish nationals. Senator Richmond has referred to a particular rationale for that in the context of ISIS and the phenomenon known as foreign fighters who have travelled from a number of EU and other countries to fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq. We need to be mindful of that in our jurisdiction.

The Minister has rightly commented a number of times on the superb record of the Defence Forces and in particular their recent record in the rescue of 13,000 people on recent missions in the Mediterranean by the Naval Service.

I wish to focus on two issues. First is how we could assist with the preservation of cultural heritage in a practical way on the international stage, not just through this Bill, but also in a different mechanism. Second, I wish to speak about Syria and the Irish response to the crisis in Syria.

Others have spoken about matters related to protection of cultural heritage to do with the smuggling of artefacts and the need for interagency co-operation and interplay with other UNESCO conventions. At the end of September at an important meeting, the importance of interplay between the six UNESCO cultural conventions was highlighted. The chairperson of the committee on the second protocol to this Hague Convention - the original convention of 1954 - spoke about a cultural cleansing taking place. She said that protecting cultural heritage in the event of armed conflict is more urgent than ever given that the destruction of cultural heritage has reached unprecedented levels. She underscored the need for those agencies engaged under the different conventions to work together to address, in particular, illicit trafficking in cultural property flowing from conflict situations - the looting that Senator Higgins mentioned.

We are all very conscious of the major role of the international art market and customs officials in different countries. This was also highlighted at the UNESCO conference. Decades later we are still dealing with the aftermath of the Holocaust and the seizure of properties from Jewish families in Germany and their dispersal across different countries internationally. Clearly there is an important point about interplay and other measures and mechanisms beyond this sort of Bill to address destruction of cultural heritage.

In that respect, last year when the UK announced its intention to ratify this convention, the UK Secretary of State for Culture not only announced ratification of the convention, but also made a commitment to a UK financial fund to assist in the preservation and rescue of artefacts, a move which some commentators said conjured up images of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. On a serious level, resources clearly need to be put at the disposal of those working on the ground to try to protect artefacts in countries in conflict where artefacts, cultural objects and buildings are under siege.

The US State Department has backed a cultural heritage project run by Professor Michael Danti from Boston University. He has talked about the worst cultural heritage crisis since the Second World War taking place in Syria and northern Iraq. Will Ireland consider putting resources into a similar fund for the protection of cultural artefacts? We may already be doing that through the Irish Aid programme and other programmes. It is worth talking about the need to resource protection and preservation measures when discussing the Bill.

As we saw in Palmyra in 2015, ISIS is trying to erase Syrian culture and the history of its civilisation, as it is also doing in northern Iraq. Senator McFadden eloquently described the appalling destruction of Palmyra. The extensive breaches of international humanitarian law in Syria are being committed by other parties as well and we must also speak about the Syrian Government and Russia. We have spoken about that both here and most recently at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade. At my initiative, this House passed unanimously an all-party motion condemning the destruction of Aleppo and condemning the bombardment of civilians in Aleppo and other urban centres across Syria.

We are also working on putting together a motion with the Not On Our Watch group to ask the Government to welcome up to 200 unaccompanied minors here from the Calais camp, many of them children who have fled conflict and destruction in Syria and other countries, such as Afghanistan, and who are currently languishing in this very chaotic situation with the destruction by the French authorities of the Calais jungle. I ask the Minister to press the Government for Ireland to extend a welcome to a number of unaccompanied minors, to whom we owe a duty.

Last week at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Minister spoke eloquently about our commitments to resettlement and relocation programmes. Along with the Minister, many of us expressed our concern at the very slow pace of relocating people here from Greece and Italy who have come from Syria. It was envisaged that they would be processed at a much quicker rate to come to Ireland from temporary camps in Greece and Italy. The Minister indicated that only 69 people have come through from Greece. There is a particular issue with delays in Italy. We need to speed up the process of bringing in the 4,000 people we have already committed to bringing. In the shorter term we should also consider welcoming a number of unaccompanied minors who have fled conflict and who are now languishing in Calais.

Breaches of international humanitarian law include cultural destruction of the sort being targeted in the Bill. Of course, we all support every effort that can be made to preserve cultural heritage and to pass legislation such as this.We need to offer financial support to efforts to preserve cultural heritage in different conflict situations and moral support to civilians fleeing destruction and carnage in their home countries.