Air Navigation and Transport (Amendment) Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland We have joined alliances. They have included the United Nations and include the international system of international law, to which we have signed up. There are difficult choices. The brave choice is not about who we get behind and what compromises we make. War is not comics. With great respect for the good intentions of all who speak, war and weapons kill. The tools of war, when transited, are engaged in death. The death being dealt by the weapons that have passed through our airspace has been in breach of international law and of the greatest alignments and commitments we have made to play our part in the world, which is to be part of that structure of international law. Those core points and the idea that you do not use aggression are the four we heard from the ICC judges who were here this week. You do not destroy self-determination or engage in crimes of aggression. There is a morality in war. You do not kill civilians and children. You do not target children. The weapons and military equipment that have been used and have travelled through our airspace to Israel have broken all of those laws. The difficult choice, which I do not think should be difficult if you have a conscience, is to say we are brave enough to stand up for ourselves and to say we do not want to be complicit in war crimes. We do not accept being part of war crimes. The difficult choice is to be willing to ask if we can inspect this plane. There is this idea that we will step up. Again, I say this with absolute respect to those who speak, but when we talk about things we need to be clear. What is not happening right now and where Ireland is failing in courage, while people have this idea we will be part of these armies and save European values, is that we do not even have the courage to stand up to look at the planes and inspect them. We have an eyes wide shut approach that has been there for decades including through the illegal Iraq war. It has been there and it continues to be there. We do not look at what is in the planes. We have powers. I have been through three iterations. I had my own arms embargo Bill before this. The Bill being brought through now by Senator Stephenson is incredibly important, but the previous Bills were the same principle. We have heard different lines from Ministers. We heard the then Minister, Eamon Ryan, tell us he needed new random inspection powers. That is being offered here. We had the current Minister, Darragh O'Brien, say he is going to use the existing powers. Two years on from that and there have been zero inspections. They have powers they are not using. My Bill was trying to tell them to use the powers they already have. There are powers we are told would be needed to do random inspections. These are being provided by the Bill. I have details of how it works. They are very clear powers to allow a regime of random inspections to take place. There is an argument put in that asks if we have to fly alongside the planes and stop them in mid-air, as if that is what is being asked for. No, the measure is simply that there is legitimate information like a manifest when they pack the plane in Halifax or wherever. When they pack the plane with weapons there is a manifest that says there are weapons in the plane, and it is on its way to wherever it is on its way to. Those are the grounds. If that plane has not even had the decency in some cases to seek an exemption, because they have such disregard for our laws, the Minister should be able to say we are concerned about what we have been told is in the flight, and as they did not seek an exemption, we would like them to land for inspection. You do not have to drag them from the sky. However, by making that request for compliance and them breaching that request if they continue on and do not land, then you already have a breach. These are not shadowy vehicles. They are Lufthansa and FedEx. They are real companies. Those real companies that in many cases have headquarters in Ireland can be fined. We then enter a world of consequences. This is the minimum for breaching our laws and refusing to bother even asking for an exemption. That leaves aside the fact that in my legislation I was looking to prohibit exemptions in certain circumstances. Senator Stephenson's Bill does not go that far. She is literally just asking to inspect the planes. She is presenting the tool the Government said is needed to inspect the planes and saying to inspect the planes. There is no justification for turning our eyes away again and refusing to step up to it. It does matter because our neutrality is our strength in the world because part of it is that we are credible actors. The fact is that lots of countries have brought in arms embargoes. Spain has brought it in. Slovenia has brought it in. This is not some impossible thing. The Government can limit the transit of weapons, but at minimum let us begin by looking honestly and directly. I urge that the Minister of State will not just say why he is or is not supporting this Bill, but that he will tell us what the Government is going to do about the flights and the illegal transit of arms through our airspace. What is the Government's plan? Is it to work with Senator Stephenson or does it have a new plan? We have been waiting years. --- 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