I thank the Minister of State for coming in. Of course, I am disappointed that it is not the direct line Minister, given the importance of this legislation.
The Bill is a response to the ongoing evidence that weapons are routinely transiting through Ireland. I understand that the Government is opposing this Bill on the basis of some very minor arguments. We have a ten-Stage legislative process in Ireland for the purpose of amending legislation. This Bill was drafted by the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, who have advised me that it is legally sound. If the Government is not happy with elements of this Bill, I wish it would make amendments with me. I would be very happy to work with it. I have a proven track record of working collaboratively across the House. The Government's stated justification for opposing the Bill does not engage in any meaningful way with the policy intent behind it.
The Bill identifies a serious legislative gap in the inspection of flights. It is designed to address the gaps expressed by the former Minister, Eamon Ryan. He committed under the previous Government to address this matter. Did this policy issue fall under the new coalition? Does the Government not care about these overhead flights any more? Has the issue just completely changed for it? It is bitterly disappointing that the Government is opposing the Bill instead of meaningfully engaging with it.
Shannon Airport has been used as a transatlantic gateway for US military operations for the past 30 years. Weapons have been carried by military planes, which are required to apply for diplomatic clearance. However, commercial airlines are also being used to ferry weapons through Ireland without any oversight by the Government. Our laws unequivocally forbid the passage of weapons through our airspace. Banning the transportation of weapons through Ireland is not new. It has been a long-standing principle borne out in Ireland's neutrality. The Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation states that no munitions of war may be carried in or above the territory of another state except by permission. The Taoiseach has previously noted that it is expressly prohibited for civil aircraft to carry munitions of war in Irish sovereign airspace without being granted an exemption to do so by the Minister for Transport, so the Government knows the rules.
Why do we see reports again and again on the passage of weapons through Ireland, which the Government chooses to ignore? What is the point of these rules if we do not enforce them? There has not been a single Government inspection of an aircraft in recent years. Under the Hague Convention on neutrality, Ireland as a neutral state has a responsibility to ensure that belligerents do not move troops or munitions of war through our territory. The High Court found us to be in breach of our own regulations and obligations under the convention in 2003.
We have heard consistently from the Government that it simply does not have the power to carry out on-the-spot inspections of planes and that it lacks any legislative basis to do so. As such, I have brought that legislative basis. My Bill addresses these gaps, which were first identified by Eamon Ryan in 2024. It would confer powers on An Garda Síochána to carry out inspections of planes to deter the misuse of civil aircraft in the transportation of weapons. It expands the definition of "state aircraft" to include military, customs or police, which will need to request permission to fly over or land in Ireland, broadening the scope of who needs to inform the Government. Under this Bill, it would be a criminal offence, punishable by fine or imprisonment, to obstruct the investigation of an aircraft.
These enforcement powers and the accompanying penalties laid out in my Bill would be a deterrent to any airlines that consider breaching our rules. Up until this point, it seems that no airlines have been deterred by any of our existing legislation. Lufthansa, Delta and Israel's El Al have all transported Lockheed Martin combat jet munitions to Israel via Ireland - parts used to weaponise the F-35 jets that have bombed Gaza and Lebanon. FedEx, also carrying F-35 components, was aided through our airspace by AirNav Ireland. Challenge Airlines, the Belgian-Israeli airline, was under investigation by the Department of Transport in 2024, but was allowed to continue the illegal transport of F-35 jet parts through Irish airspace.
The first section of this Bill responds to the growing concerns regarding the use of Irish territory to facilitate human rights abuses. I am referring to the repeated use of Shannon Airport as a refuelling stop for a number of inhumane Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, ICE, deportation flights from the US, which reportedly took place between May 2025 and February this year. Some of these flights were part of forced third-country removals, with the individuals being deported to countries, such as Rwanda and Djibouti, where they had zero prior connection and where there have been subsequent reports of individuals being subject to arbitrary detention. Amnesty International has expressed serious concerns regarding Ireland's facilitation of these third-country removals and our potential complicity in enabling human rights violations. Media reports regarding one of these flights detailed how, in January, a group of Palestinian men being deported to the West Bank through Shannon Airport were shackled by their hands and ankles, a horrifying image.
Why are our airports being used to facilitate the Trump Administration's cruel and inhumane mass deportation system? How can this Government accept a situation where we have not been notified, let alone where we can prevent this kind of thing happening on Irish soil? We cannot afford to treat this kind of activity as business as usual when dealing with a rogue US Government that has shown utter contempt for human rights.
My Bill extends what qualifies as a state aircraft by including custom flights, requiring ICE flights to abide by human rights standards and seek exemptions before landing in Shannon. It is my expectation that no Government would ever provide an exemption for ICE-style deportations and would therefore stop these flights landing in Shannon. However, if the deportations are conducted using commercial airlines, the provisions for random inspections in this legislation would provide safeguards.
I wish to move on to the issue of weapons flying through Ireland, which is the so-called do not ask, do not tell rule. We know that the Minister of State's Department regularly provides exemptions for military planes to land in Shannon. I do not agree with it at all. The practice fundamentally undermines our neutrality and credibility as a country that upholds international law when those weapons are being used, for example, in the US Government's illegal war in Iran. The Irish Times reported this year that there was a significant uptake in these flights coming through Ireland before and during that war. Of course, correlation does not always mean causation, but that an increase of 248 flights went unchecked in Irish airspace due to an administrative error is alarming. How can we be confident that the Government knows that there is nothing of concern in these planes that pass overhead when it cannot even accurately count the known flights, never mind the others?
Beyond the known exemptions, the Government has routinely held that there are no weapons landing in Shannon or being transported through Irish airspace. Just this year, the Taoiseach said during his St. Patrick's Day trip that there were no weapons landing in Shannon, but we know that there are weapons routinely transiting through Irish airspace on civilian planes. Eamon Ryan said in the Dáil in 2024 that "unless an air operator has sought an exemption to carry munitions of war, there is no mechanism by which my Department will have knowledge of the type of cargo that is being carried on such overflights." In 2024, the Taoiseach claimed that the Government had no prior knowledge of civilian aircraft that had illegally been transporting weapons through Irish airspace with overflight permission. The Taoiseach said that all the Government could do was simply tell airlines that they were not allowed to do it. The Taoiseach said, "We're not going to be flying planes, shadowing planes, that's not going to be a reality, let's be honest." I agree that shadowing planes would be utterly ridiculous. However, our current enforcement mechanism amounts to relying on the word of private companies that they are simply not doing it. It is a system of blind trust.
Just last week, Amnesty joined legal action against the Belgian subsidiary of FedEx for the alleged illegal transit of arms through Belgium, including parts once again for F-35 fighter jets. That is another example of multinational companies showing their utter disregard for domestic law. That is the very reason we need to have a random on-the-spot inspection regime.
The Government previously claimed that we were powerless. Is this Government willing to acknowledge what the dogs on the street know? Weapons are routinely transiting through Ireland without approval. It is a direct breach of our rules and national sovereignty. Is the Government turning a blind eye? Is it wilful ignorance or does it really believe that it has no power to have any oversight over this?
Given the number of military exemptions routinely made, I assume that the Government is not particularly interested in knowing what goes on in our skies and in policing the consistent breaches of our rules. However, I appeal to the Government's own self-expressed commitment to neutrality and ask that it seriously consider the proposal before it.
This Bill only seeks to codify into law powers that will enable the Government to enforce its own existing rules.
In the face of Government inaction and hand-wringing about the inability to inspect flights, this Bill provides an inspection regime to put a stop to this illegal practice. I refer to explosives, detonators for use in missiles, missile launchers, sniper ammunition, grenades, handguns, tear gas, parts for F-35 jets - all items used to murder and main Palestinian civilians and journalists, bomb hospitals and target ambulances in Gaza. These inventories are listed on the airway bills of flights passing through Irish airspace and that is simply a fact. Far from doing everything we can to aid the people of Gaza, the Government is repeatedly facilitating the US and Israeli war machines to commit violence in the Middle East. I am sure that will be a very uncomfortable thought for many of us but it is simply what is going on and this is why my Bill matters.
The issue is not going to go away. We should not really be having our hands in any violence. I do not believe any of the Irish people want any part in indirectly facilitating the death and destruction of Palestinians or anyone else across the globe. Why would we facilitate any elements of war by allowing weapons to transit, and why would we undermine our own standing internationally? The vast majority of Irish people - 77% - supports Irish neutrality. They do not want to see weapons flying through this country. We are obviously facing a world that is more complex than it ever was before. Civilian suffering has been normalised. The number of dead people in places like Palestine has lost all meaning. They are just faceless, nameless people but they are not faceless, are they? They are humans with loved ones, with people who cry over their deaths and feel their absence like an ache in the hearts. I have no doubt that the Minister of State and his colleagues at Cabinet feel their pain as much as I do. I am not claiming to have any monopoly on empathy but the Government has to wake up and see that it facilitates this violence when it allows these weapons over our skies or in our airports.
"Ireland the peacebuilder." We often hear this refrain - that we are peacebuilders. People see us uniquely in the world because of our history, what we have done, and the great things we have done for peace across the globe. However, if we are serious about conflict prevention, peacemaking, peacebuilding and our peacekeeping work, we simply cannot allow this practice to continue. We often hear from the Government that Ireland is perceived as an honest broker internationally at the UN and different forums. Does the Minister of State think we can actually claim to be an honest broker while allowing these weapons, which are tools of war, killing, maiming, murder and destruction, to fly through Ireland? This is a direct question. Can the Minister of State not see how wrong that is?
On the one hand, the Government says it wants global peace and an end to the killing of children in Gaza, and it is a sentiment I strongly agree with but, on the other hand, we facilitate the transportation of killing machines. Is the Government happy that weapons that may have been used in Gaza, Lebanon or Iran have flown through Ireland? Does that make us proud? I think that is a stain on us as a country. It seriously calls into question all of Ireland's credibility on issues of peace. We are seeking to earn a seat on the UN Human Rights Council this year, while at the same time, people have flown through Shannon, shackled together to be deported to what is effectively a warzone. We allowed that this year and this year we seek to be on the UN Human Rights Council. The dichotomy is stark and I have got to say it feels like pure hypocrisy. We should be following the likes of Spain, Switzerland and Austria, which have all restricted airspace to US military planes en route to Israel.
I would like to finish by emphasising that this is a good and strong Bill. I thank the legal drafters at the Office of Parliamentary Legal Advisers, OPLA, for ensuring it is sound and robust. I would particularly like to thank Ms Maeve Gleeson. I thank the tireless staff of The Ditch and the volunteers of Shannonwatch, who provided so much of the factual evidence in my statement today. In light of all of this, I ask the Minister of State to take this Bill seriously and understand that it actually fulfils our own obligations and sovereign roles under the Constitution. I did not make us a neutral country. I am glad that we are one. I did not write the Constitution. I am glad the safeguards are in there to emphasis our neutrality. I did not write the Chicago Convention or the Hague Convention. These are things that just exist - that we have signed up to, ratified and written ourselves and, yet, under the current practice we are just turning a blind eye to all of those things. Do not ask, do not tell; it is not happening; we do not know it is happening; we cannot inspect it; we are powerless. I do not believe that is true. If there is a will, there is a way, and this legislation is a pathway. I urge the Minister of State to seriously consider working with me on Committee Stage to strengthen it.
