Richard Boyd Barrett: Bill Smuggles Defence Powers, Neutrality at Risk

Okay, I want to ring the alarm bells about this bill. I think it's a sleight of hand. An apparently benign, innocuous bill which is supposedly about supporting enterprise and industry is actually a bill that's been used to smuggle in something much more sinister. And that's what's actually happening with this bill. And what it proves, if I'm right, is that this government absolutely cannot be trusted with Irish neutrality, cannot be trusted not to engage in war profiteering or, even worse, cannot be trusted not to actively be complicit with genocidal crimes being committed by people like the Israeli state. Now that's a fairly strong charge that I'm making, but I refer to section 8 of the bill. And what section 8 does is delete the current requirement on companies engaged in defence technology, defence and security technology, to notify the government and seek their approval when they're engaged in the area of defence and security technology. And this provision of the bill was not included in the draft scheme of the bill. So when this was initially drafted, nobody knew it was there. And all of a sudden it appears. Now why should that worry us? Just to be clear, I'll read from the Library and Research Service description. It says, there is a notable implication of the proposed section 8 of the bill, which, if enacted, would allow the enterprise development agencies to engage with and support industries, so state agencies, to engage with and support industries primarily associated with defence without government approval. Now, this happens in the same week that the Currency magazine has exposed, after 12 months of battling with the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment, to get the information about government approvals for dual-use technology going to the Israeli military. And, after a fight by Niall Sargent from the Currency, as he's published this week, and people can read it for themselves, we discover that between 2020 and 2024, about 35 million euros worth of export licences to the Israeli military were granted by the Department of Trade, Enterprise and Employment, because you have to get a licence and approval and so on. And, most of that happened in 2024, the year of the genocide, Israel's genocide, committed by the Israeli military. So, the export licences, for example, to the IDF in 2020 were worth 1.5 million. Next year, 2021, they're worth 84,000. Not meaningless sums. 2022, 1.8 million. And then, in 2023, the year the genocide begins, they jump to 12 million. In 2024, they jump to 20 million. Now, why is it that the Currency has had such a hard time eliciting that information from the Department of Trade and Employment? Of course, because it's absolutely damning. The end user for dual-use technology is the Israeli military machine, engaged in a genocidal slaughter of the people of Gaza. And in the year that it's doing this, slaughtering tens of thousands of people, in the most horrific way, levelling Gaza, where its leaders are saying, we are going to... Some of them saying, like the Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, saying it's okay to kill everybody in Gaza. Describing the Palestinians as human animals. So, everybody knows what's going on. In January of that year, the ICJ gives a preliminary ruling, saying they believe there's a plausible case of genocide taking place. And in that year, the Department of Trade and Enterprise approves a surge in exports to the Israeli military from this country. And now, the Irish government want to reduce the obligation on companies that might be engaged in the production of that kind of technology from having to seek government authorisation. To me, that stinks to high heaven. Particularly, when it is the fact that this wasn't in the original draft scheme of the bill. And is described... I mean, when the Minister speaks, he refers to the proposed amendment allows the agencies to support financially and non-financially enterprises in the DSR sphere. DSR sounds totally innocuous, doesn't it? Not even spelt out in the Minister's speech. So, we'll just pass by it. What does it mean? Nobody's watching this debate. Nobody's thinking what that might mean. It's described in the most innocuous terms. Although, there's a bit of a giveaway line at the very end. It does not affect existing government policy on military neutrality. I wonder why they felt the need to say that. I wonder why they felt the need to say that. Well, to my mind, there's a connection between these two things. And, of course, in the wider context, Ireland does about 3 billion worth of trade with the State of Israel. Is one of the biggest trading partners with the State of Israel in Europe. Against a background where Israel is in the dock for genocide. For the most horrific crimes. There's arrest warrants out for Netanyahu and Gallant. It's in the dock for apartheid. For the annexation of Palestinian territory. For ethnic cleansing. And they're not stopping. In fact, they're escalating. They're escalating what they're doing. And all of this happens in 2024. And then we have a bill, all of a sudden, pops up in a section that was not included in the original draft scheme of the bill saying, from now on, the IDA and Enterprise Ireland don't have to notify the government if they're supporting companies doing business in this area. That stinks. Absolutely stinks. And it looks like a cover-up of government facilitation but sort of hiding it of industries profiteering from selling technology to people like the Israeli military, and God knows who else but that's bad enough. If it was just the Israeli military, that would be enough who are committing the most heinous crimes. So I think that's outrageous. And I mentioned to Deputy Devlin, before he went out, he was quoting Lamasse. Sean Lamasse. Waxing lyrical about Sean Lamasse and how he developed development policy and so on. It would be very, very rare that I would favourably quote Eamon de Valera. But I'm going to quote something he did, favourably. It may be of interest to people in this house and the wider public to know possibly the first ever instance of this state sanctioning another state for war crimes was initiated by Eamon de Valera in 1935. Because of what, at the time, were viewed to be the genocidal crimes of the Italian regime in Abyssinia, today called Ethiopia. At the time the Italians used, in one of the first instances of chemical warfare mustard gas and other chemical agents on Ethiopian combatants and civilians in violation of the Geneva Protocol. They bombed Red Cross hospitals, tents, ambulances. They massacred about 30,000 people in Addis Ababa. And they targeted clergy, intellectuals. They burnt villages. They slaughtered livestock. They destroyed thousands of churches. This was in 1935. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Sounds very familiar. And what did Eamon de Valera do? And I am not a fan of Eamon de Valera. But Eamon de Valera instigated sanctions. And they were passed by the Dáil. Enforcing financial, commercial and other sanctions against Italy. Because as a country that had come into existence in a struggle against imperialism Eamon de Valera, and it seems the Oireachtas of the time, knew that it was a duty of a state that had been born in a struggle against colonialism that ourselves had been victims of colonial, genocidal policies that had led to things like the Great Hunger and all the horrors that colonialism visited us they felt a duty and an obligation to impose sanctions. They weren't worried, by the way, about was there going to be economic blowback. We were a poor country then. Poor country. But de Valera and the Oireachtas of the time said, No, we can't. We have to act against this. And it was deemed at the time to be genocidal. With Africans, by the way. Take no Bertie or Herne. African people being slaughtered by Europeans. And fair play to Eamon de Valera and the Oireachtas of the time. They imposed sanctions. But what do we do? What is this government doing? It's approving licenses to a state engaged in a genocidal slaughter. And it cannot, it cannot have been the case that the people who approved those licenses at the time were not aware that this represented a massive surge. To go from a million a year in one year, 85,000 a year, to 12 and then 20 million. A massive increase in the export of that technology to the Israeli military. I mean, I heard Barry Ward, I debated with him on the radio this morning. And he was trying to sort of make some sort of separation between technology that would go to the Israeli military that is complicit with the genocide and technology that would go to the Israeli military that is not complicit with the genocide. In the midst of a genocide. And as fair play to Dave McCullough put the question, well, even if they were contributing to the technology that helped them pay the soldiers, they were complicit. Anything going to the Israeli military or to any military. I mean, imagine we were providing the Russian government with the means to, if we were sending them by-roads, it would be considered unacceptable complicity with what Russia is doing in Ukraine. But in the midst of a genocide, a surge in exports from this country approved by the Department of Trade and Enterprise to the Israeli military while they're carrying out a genocide. I mean, to me, that's just absolutely shameful. And then we have a bill doing this in the same week. And if an oil sergeant, a fair play to an oil sergeant from the currency for chasing this story, it should be read. But he says it took 12 months of battling to get this information. Why did he have to battle to get the information? Because it's shameful. That's why. That's why. So, the government should explain this stuff, right? But the lesson I draw from it, as if we didn't have enough evidence, with the US military going through Shannon, with overflights, potentially carrying weapons and so on, to the state of Israel, the refusal of this state to impose even the most minimal sanctions on the Israeli state simultaneously, but paying lip service to their solidarity with the Palestinian people, meanwhile approving licenses to the Israeli military while the Israeli military slaughters people, slaughters men, women, and most horrendously of all, children, babies, infants, slaughtering them. And where the people presiding over the, you know, the defense minister, who's presiding over the Israeli military, the so-called IDF, in reality the occupation forces, actually saying, we're going to starve these people. We're going to deny them the means to exist. I loathe to interrupt you. I must ask, just to qualify for the debate notes, whether you are paraphrasing or quoting directly from speeches that have been made in the Knesset. You've made a couple of remarks. Could you just qualify if you're paraphrasing or quoting? I am paraphrasing, but seeing as you've mentioned that, it might actually be worth quoting them directly. So, for example, Yov Galant said the defense minister, the minister who's in charge of the IDF, described the Palestinians in the context of the assault on Gaza as human animals. Do you have a document that is... Yeah, yeah, that's, by the way, that's in front of the ICJ. That was part of the evidence that was submitted to the ICJ. Okay. So this is very much in the public domain. The Knesset, members of the ruling party of the Likud, made public statements calling for, and I'm now reading from Sadaka's document on the genocidal intent, where they called for a Nakba against the Palestinian people and talked about erasing, quote, the Gaza Strip from the face of the earth. The prime minister, Netanyahu, referred to the Palestinians as Amalek. Now, this is a well-known biblical reference which refers to the Hebrew Bible, and the reference is to a part of the Bible which says, now go attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them. Put to death men, women and children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. That's what Netanyahu was referring to when he used the term Amalek. And, of course, there's a lot more evidence. I haven't got it all in front of me. All has been submitted to the International Court of Justice. So this is what they were doing, and they were saying they were going to do it, and our government approved a surge in licenses to the military machine that was carrying out these atrocities against the Palestinian people. It is absolutely shameful, and now we have a piece of legislation, and I'll conclude on this because I've made the point, but I really just feel the need to ring the alarm bells about this. In the context of all of that, we now have a piece of legislation, not flagged in advance, with a section in it that seeks to reduce the obligations on state agencies to notify the government when they are supporting companies that are engaged in the production of technology in this area. That's bad. Very bad.