Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is welcome to the House. This is my first time addressing him since he was appointed to this role and it is good to have him here.

I will start by saying that I have no time for the Israelis and what they have done. I compliment the Irish Government on taking the decision to support the South African case. What is being done by Israel - and I include Hamas and Hezbollah in this - with the slaughter of innocent citizens is unacceptable on any scale. What Israel has done is murder on almost an industrial scale and it is absolutely outrageous.

With respect to the Bill before us, I compliment those of my colleagues who brought it to the House because they brought it with the best of intentions. They brought it to bring the issue to the attention of the Irish people. Anyone sitting in the Irish Senate will have received hundreds of emails over the last few days demanding that we pass this Bill. I would dearly like to be here speaking for the passing of this Bill. However, passing legislation for the sake of it or passing legislation with a title that might indicate that we have some control would be wrong in every sense of the word. We have to look at the wording of the Bill and the things it says. First and foremost, the Bill refers to the transit of weapons through Ireland. Where is Ireland? Ireland is our land, sea and airspace and the passage of weapons through any of those three would be unacceptable. Are we talking about just those aircraft that land and take off at designated airports in Ireland? Is that what we are looking at in this Bill? Are we able to talk about those aircraft that transit through our airspace? It is no secret to anybody in this country that we are incapable of seeing what is in our airspace if the aircraft flying there have their transponders switched off. The Government has taken steps to get primary radar installed so that we will know in the future but, as of today, we have no idea who is up there; none whatsoever.

Second, if there is a rogue aircraft up there carrying weapons or munitions through Irish airspace, how do we get up to it? What control do we have over anything in our sky? The aircraft we have in this country are incapable of flying above 10,000 ft. The bottom line is that we cannot control our airspace and with the best will in the world, the Minister can issue all of the diktats he wants to all the countries in the world and they can simply ignore him because we cannot see them up there or deal with them up there.

The Bill specifies the transit of arms to Israel. What about places like Venezuela or Myanmar? Let us suppose somebody decides to send weapons to Myanmar, to the military junta there. Are they exempt because they are not bound for Israel? If we are talking about the transit of weapons and military equipment to some of these military juntas around the world, then we must include them all. That is the flaw in the Bill. We cannot simply single out Israel because we do not like Israel. At the end of the day, any citizen in this country watching TV at night sees the murder and destruction that is taking place. Netanyahu and his henchmen should be in jail. I have no difficulty saying that. How is the Minister to inspect aircraft that are travelling over Ireland at 35,000 ft? How is that going to happen? It simply cannot happen. Is there any difficulty with somebody sending munitions and weapons to ISIS to be used in Syria or the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Have we decided that only one country in the entire world cannot send munitions through Ireland by sea, land or air? As I said, we can talk all we want about what flies over us but we cannot do anything about it.

I turn now to permission granted by the Minister to allow aircraft to land. Shannon Airport has been a bugbear in this country for so long. In terms of aircraft landing at Shannon Airport, there are two types of aircraft travelling there with military people on board. There are those carrying personnel on United Nations missions who are serving in a peacekeeping capacity somewhere in the world. We are obliged under UN rules to provide landing and refuelling facilities to them and to ensure the welfare of those on board. Soldiers do not travel without their weapons. Their personal weapons are part of their kit and they travel with them. If they need an exemption to land, then they get the exemption to land in Shannon. That is my understanding of the situation. I see no difficulty with that. As a former member of the Defence Forces, I would not hand over my weapon to anybody; it is mine. That is the way it goes, so I have no difficulty with the exemptions.

We are talking about exemptions today but we are actually talking about a macro exemption. We have not broken it down into what exemptions are granted. Can anybody produce a record for me today that Ireland has granted an exemption to an aircraft to carry munitions into Ireland and then to fly on to Israel? Are we talking about those that are on UN missions or those that are rotating? We should be aware of the fact that there is a significant US military force in Europe and they rotate those military missions frequently. Are those soldiers allowed to bring their weapons with them? If they are not, they should be because they are part of their personal kit. If the exemption is for a soldier carrying a weapon that is not loaded with ammunition but is his or her own personal weapon, I do not see how we can object to that. Our soldiers carry their weapons when they travel on aircraft. Some time ago, we had two officers in the Congo and they had to fly home but there was a difficulty with that because they had personal weapons. They could not carry their personal weapons on an aircraft at the time. We have to be careful about what we are discussing. When we discuss troops flying into Shannon, generally speaking the Department of foreign affairs or anybody who is asked about the transition of troops to Ireland talks about the Air Navigation (Foreign Military Aircraft) Order 1952, the Air Navigation (Carriage of Munitions of War, Weapons and Dangerous Goods) Order 1973 and the 1989 Act. Never, however, do they refer to or cite the obligations Ireland has with regard to its membership of the United Nations. We need to be a little more honest with the public on that. Perhaps that is something the Minister will take up in his new role. As a member of the United Nations since 1955, we have agreed to abide by the rules and requirements as laid down as part of membership. The bottom line is that we have obligations that we must fulfil.

There has been some discussion about Irish-registered aircraft. Ours is one of the largest aircraft leasing countries in the world. Is the Minister telling me that in some way he will be able to put policeman all over the world and that anywhere an Irish-registered aircraft lands or takes off, he will have his inspection teams on those aircraft to check they contain? That is an unrealistic prospect and it simply cannot happen. We have to be honest about what we are saying here. I fully support what we are trying to do, but passing legislation purely so that we can stick it on a flagpole and say we have passed legislation to ban and bar the transition of weapons and munitions through Ireland is simply not good enough.

Regarding the Bill, I would like somebody to expand on its intended outcome with reference to section 2(1)(b) in respect of military or dual-use items where there is a significant likelihood that they could be deployed by the State of Israel specifically by defining the limits and boundaries of the word "likelihood". What is meant by that? It sounds good, but what exactly are we trying to achieve?

I have a huge concern that we are using this House today to try to enact a Bill that will have zero meaning if enacted. It will place obligations on the Minister that he cannot fulfil. It will place obligations on our Defence Forces that cannot be fulfilled under any circumstances. The use of Shannon has been subject to judicial review in the courts in the Edward Horgan case. I worked with Edward and know the honesty of the man and what he was trying to do. Sometimes, we simply cannot enforce what is unenforceable. I may have all of this wrong, and perhaps the Minister will stand up in a few minutes and tell me that I am talking through my hat, that he has a grand plan and that he will introduce the Bill and make the hundreds of people who have emailed me over the past few days happy. .

Not one word in the Bill will save one Gazan, or person in south Lebanon, Israel, Yemen, Syria or anywhere else in the world because we cannot implement what it is saying. I am desperately sorry because I know my colleagues have put a massive amount of work into the Bill. They have lobbied the public and hundreds of emails have come in to support it. It is inoperable and cannot work. We need to go back to the drawing board with the Minister and his Department and see whether we can do something that can be implemented. Can we call on our near neighbours to help us in these cases? Is there something we can do to prevent any weapons from anywhere in the world from going to Israel? I fully understand the situation in Israel at the moment. It sickens me every night to see what is going on. However, at the end of the day there are other places in the world, such as Syria and Yemen, where people are being murdered all day every day by military juntas all over the place. Earlier today I spoke about Iran and the hanging of almost 1,000 people in 2024. We cannot turn our eyes away from the rot that there is in the world, but let us not pass legislation that is inoperable.