Industrial Development (Amendment) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2026: Report Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

The Minister of State accused us of being disingenuous and conflating issues. I would push back and say that it is the Government that is being disingenuous in putting this forward. Deputy Boyd Barrett makes a perfectly valid point. If the Government does not have an issue and this is not about military spending, then it should accept our amendments. Everything in the public eye tells us that we are seeing a shift in spending in Europe. This measure seems to me to be clearly jumping on that bandwagon and taking advantage of that move towards militarisation. We are seeing a multi-annual financial framework reorientated towards military spending. We are seeing the knock-on effects of that in smaller countries not getting access to the funding they should get access to because, of course, it is the largest countries that have the arms industries that will benefit most from this. The Government's response is not to say, "That is not fair and we should not be doing it." Its response is to say, "We want to get in on that cash as well; we want to jump in there." That is what is happening.
There is nothing coming from the Government around the fact that this means there is less money for social cohesion in Europe. Our best defence against the propaganda of war and the disinformation coming at us from Russia and elsewhere is to double down on investing in our communities, small businesses and the people who need this money to survive and thrive in life. It is not to direct this money towards bombs, bullets and all the associated industry related to war and arms. Whether the Minister of State admits it or not, that is what this legislation is trying to do. If he does not admit it, why will he simply not accept these amendments?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-30/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-30