Air Navigation and Transport (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10 ============================================================ Tom Clonan (IND), University of Dublin The Minister of State is welcome to the House. Fáilte isteach. I commend Senator Stephenson and the Cross-Party Group on bringing forward this Bill. I am disappointed with the position that the Government has taken. I know that the Minister of State is not the line Minister, and that he is here to read out the Government's position, so I do not mean any personal slight to him whatsoever. I know him to be a person of the highest integrity. Like me, as a family man, I know the Minister of State is as horrified as we are by what is transiting through our airspace. I want to give a little bit of context. Are weapons of war being brought through Shannon Airport for use in the Middle East and elsewhere? They are. In 2005, as The Irish Times ' security analyst, I got the opportunity to interview US troops in Shannon and, as I have said here previously, journalists do not get permission to do that from Shannon Airport. They get it from the US State Department. It has a permanent military liaison officer in Shannon. At the time I was there, he was at the rank of lieutenant colonel. I have his mobile phone number if the Minister of State wants to call him or her and ask them what they are doing here. One of the civilian aircraft that is chartered by the United States Government from airlines like Omni Air International and others landed while I was there, and I asked if could go on board and see the troops arriving in Shannon. When the door opened, I went up the steps with a photographer from The Irish Times and went in. The aircraft was full of weapons. In fact, the cabin crew said welcome to Shannon and asked people to please leave smaller weapons in the overhead bin and larger weapons under the seat in front of them and to please not carry weapons or ammunition into Shannon Airport duty free. That was in the newspaper. It was published in The Irish Times . It is free to download. People do not need to have a subscription to The Irish Times . If people put in "Tom Clonan", "Shannon", "weapons" and "Irish Times", they will get the full article. Let me be clear, weapons do transit through Shannon on aircraft that do not have sovereign immunity, and which can be searched, but for the fact there is an unwillingness to do so on the part of the Government and its agencies. Further to that, I was subpoenaed to the trial of Mick Wallace and Clare Daly in Ennis District Court after they breached the airport boundary, and I gave evidence to the effect that there are weapons on board and that evidence was accepted by the judge. For anybody here who suggests that this is an overstatement or hearsay, I can tell them that I have seen it. The other issue I have is not just what is on the ground but what is passing through our airspace. There has been a huge increase in the volume of US military air traffic through our controlled airspace since 7 October 2023 and in the past few years the Irish taxpayer has paid over €10 million to AirNav Ireland to pay for the onward transit of these aircraft to the Middle East which are ferrying munitions to Israel. Imagine, the Irish taxpayer is making a material contribution of over €10 million to send cluster munitions and other weapons to be used in Lebanon as part of the ethnic cleansing south of the Litani river. Those weapons are being used in proximity to Irish troops. The Guardian reported that cluster munitions have been found in the little villages and wadis around the Irish positions. What other country would ask its taxpayer to make a financial contribution to weapons fired at its own troops, that is, our young men and women out there; the best of us? At the moment, the United States provides 78% of all Israeli weapons and munitions and since 7 October 2023, there has been a spike in that delivery of up to $12 billion per year. Where does it transit through? It goes by rapid response airlift through our airspace, and we are paying under EUROCONTROL the navigation charges for those things. If this Bill is progressed and enacted, we could at least purge ourselves of the moral responsibility for the slaughter of innocent Lebanese civilians. Again, people may talk about hearsay, I have witnessed this. I know there are some people in Government who do not like people speaking to their lived experience but, how and ever, I shall continue to do so. High explosives cause limb separation, decapitation, the pulping of internal organs and the shattering of bones of small children and elderly people. That is not hyperbole. That is the reality on the ground. If someone sees it, they will never forget it. When I turn on the Flightradar24 app on my phone and look at the air traffic corridor over us, I am conscious that those weapons are passing through our airspace with our consent and us making a financial contribution to it and that is completely at odds with our neutral status. At a recent session in this Chamber, the Minister of State had a great argument. He said, "No, they do not", and I had to point out to him that he is completely and utterly out of depth. As for the situational awareness on the part of this Government in relation to the Middle East and the export of alumina to Russia, I am going to say that it is unwilling to acknowledge it, as opposed to unable to, but I ask the Government to think about this, reflect on it and please support this Bill. --- 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/2026-06-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-10