Departmental Strategies
Dail Éireann — 2023-04-25
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

The Government is involved in a systematic campaign of trying to condition public opinion to move Ireland away from neutrality. It is exploiting every dire crisis around the world to further make the case for reviewing neutrality and, ultimately, moving away from it into a closer alliance with NATO and the EU militarisation project. The latest example is Sudan. All present have witnessed the scenes of Irish citizens, for example, trying to flee Sudan, which have generated further discussion. Would it not be good for the Taoiseach to remind the public of a matter I raised in the House, namely, that the militias that are now killing people in Sudan were funded by the European Union? They were explicitly funded, starting with Omar al-Bashir. Mohamed Dagalo, known as Hemedti, who is in charge of the Rapid Support Forces, got €200 million to €600 million from the EU trust fund for Africa. He boasted he was getting the funding from Europe in order to stop Sudanese people leaving Sudan but it has been used to arm the militias that cracked down on the revolution in 2018 and are now being used to kill Sudanese people and threaten Irish and other EU citizens in Sudan.
Should we not remember the EU's implication in the horror that we are witnessing in Sudan?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-04-25/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:48+00:00
Sitting date: 2023-04-25