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

I will also keep my comments short. I will cut through what I would describe as a word salad in the Minister of State's answer. I call it for what it is, namely, deregulation. It is across Government policy but in this case, it is deregulation to open up Irish investment and Irish companies to manufacturing arms and dual-use goods. That is what the Government is doing. The Minister of State talks about the ambiguity, which is just insane to me. There is no evidence behind it. The Minister of State is not telling us. He is talking about it hindering things but he is not telling us how Enterprise Ireland and the IDA have been disadvantaged all these years by this one clause. Now, very conveniently and coincidentally at the same time there is increased defence spending available, the Government wants to get rid of it.
To suggest that none of us has spoken about the Defence Forces in our contributions is incorrect. As my party's defence spokesperson, I consistently speak about the underinvestment of the Government in Óglaigh na hÉireann. This Government and previous ones have led Óglaigh na hÉireann to the point where it is underfunded, with a crisis in recruitment and retention and without the capacity to even have ships in the sea at the moment.
The Minister of State should not talk nonsense about us ignoring our Defence Forces. We support level of ambition 2 funding in order that our Defence Forces can actually operate.

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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