Industrial Development (Amendment) and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2026: Report Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-30
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

Okay. The arguments have been made. I repeat that while the relevant sections we are trying to amend here, sections 4 and 5, do not explicitly refer to the arms industry and refer to relatively benign uses, we are asking for an assurance - the next section is the reason it throws doubt on these sections, and the Minister of State's decision to move out section 8 - as it does refer to, for example, consultancy grants around technological innovation, digitalisation and so on. What we are saying is in areas like that, they should be absolutely explicitly not for the military and defence sector. If grants, which could be up to €7.5 million for consultancies, €15 million in total, or land and property and so on, are not in any circumstances going to go to the security or defence industry, what is the problem with saying they will not? Why is the Minister of State refusing to accept the amendments? We are just asking for a safeguard against the use of this money by companies that would be engaged in those areas. Of course, I think he knows, and we will get on to the next section, that for many of these companies there is a grey area between digital technology, innovation in that area, and even so-called environmental stuff, and the military sector. There is a grey area that is exploited by those companies in order to produce dual-use technology, which is then used to kill people. That is where the relevance of The Currency articles and so on comes in, and the dual-use technology where officials were warning the Department that they think this will be used by the end user for military means even though the end user was saying "Of course not." The end use, of course, was an arms company deeply implicated in Israel's crimes.

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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