Air Navigation and Transport (Arms Embargo) Bill 2024 [Seanad]: Report and Final Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-22 ============================================================ Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin -----when the President of the United States uses those words against a state he has not declared war against. He calls Putin's special military operation a special combat operation. We are living in a time when full spectrum powers have turned their back on the international rules-based order and on the conventions and laws of armed conflict. By definition, what is happening in Lebanon where our troops are is war crimes. We are unhappy about the transit of alumina from Aughinish Alumina to Russia, quite rightly, but we should be even more concerned about weapons, ordnance and materials that are military and dual use transiting through our airspace. Furthermore, the Irish taxpayer is paying for that. Is this the Comedy Club? Is this the Laughter Lounge? We have hundreds of young Irish men and women in Lebanon 5 km from Bint Jbeil, which has been razed to the ground. After the murder of a French peacekeeper last week and Indonesian peacekeepers, I am very concerned about our troops. The Government is allowing weapons to pass through our airspace that could be used and that will be used in proximity to our troops. If any of our troops are seriously injured or killed I will know and I will be able to tell this House where the ordnance came from because I have an expertise in that area. God forbid that this happens because we may hang our heads in shame. It is disgraceful. Specifically to the point of dual use, I will give an example. The Israeli military has a machine called the D9 bulldozer. They take this earth-moving piece of equipment, a bulldozer, they armour it by covering it in armour plate and then they use it as a weapon. They use it to destroy houses with families inside burying them alive. They have killed US citizens in this manner. In the last couple of days, there has been a documented case of two 16-year-old boys who were detained - I should say kidnapped - by the Israel Defense Forces. They were stripped, their hands were bound behind their backs with cable ties and they were buried alive. The contemporary witnesses say that before they were crushed under one of these earth-moving pieces of equipment they could hear the boys cry out. I remember when my young men were 16, when they were blossoming into young adults at that point of the threshold of adulthood, and how beautiful 16-year-olds are. Who could put them into the ground like that and use dual-use technology to murder them in that way? This is what we are talking about with this Bill. It is not adversarial and it is not radical. It is just asking us to do the right thing. The rules-based order has been turned on its head and we are going to tolerate it. It is a very simple set of suggestions. I commend my colleagues. I will say it again. Since I came into these Houses over the last four years, I know that all of my colleagues here are good people and they share my concern and my horror at this. That is why I just ask them to please allow this piece of legislation to progress. They know what is going to happen when it is progressed. As Senator Higgins said, by opposing it Senators are making a decision. They are making a decision and it is not a passive thing of "Oh no, we have to wait and see." They would be deliberately slowing down the prospect of us intervening meaningfully in preventing genocide, femicide and medicide, which we have seen in Lebanon near where our troops are, where doctors, nurses and paramedics are deliberately targeted for murder. These are extraordinary times. This is not an extraordinary set of proposals. I prevail upon the Government to please reconsider and support this legislation to allow it to complete its passage. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-22/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:50+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-22