Prohibition of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-17 ============================================================ Nessa Cosgrove (LAB), Labour Panel Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire Stáit as a post nua. When the topic of autonomous weapons comes up for discussion, as it increasingly does, many people of my age get a flashback to the Terminator films, which saw a time when travelling cyborg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was sent back to 1984 to assassinate Sarah Connor. The AI identifies and kills women called Sarah Connor in the knowledge that it will eventually get the right one. It seemed very far-fetched to me when I was growing up in Bandon in County Cork in 1984 that an AI called Skynet might be dispatching a killer robot into the past to eliminate an individual woman. It does not seem too far-fetched now, though, in the era of Palantir, Anthropic and SpaceX, that the targeting of an individual by a machine could be a reality in just three years' time. At the moment, we live in an era where countries deploy assassinations and accept the so-called collateral damage, or killing and maiming of innocent civilians, as being okay. I am thinking of the pager attacks on the Hezbollah leadership that killed and maimed children and other innocent civilians along with the intended targets. This terrorist attack was designed specifically to cause maximum injury to the targets. In the attacks that killed the Ayatollah Khamenei, the decision was made in the full knowledge that he was likely with his family. His daughter, granddaughter, daughter-in-law and son-in-law were killed in the attack. On the first day of the Iran war, the US launched an attack in an attempt to kill members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. It hit a school, a primary school, and murdered 156 civilians, including 120 children. A person made that decision to target that complex, that building, based on human intelligence gathered by the two supposedly greatest intelligence agencies in the world, Mossad and the CIA. A person made the decision to give the green light for the attack on the ayatollah based on the assessment that his death warranted the deaths of those around him. In the case of the pager attacks, a person at the highest level of the Israeli Government made the decision that they were going to explode devices not knowing who was holding them but knowing that wives, parents, siblings or even children of the intended target would have access to the device or would be in close proximity to them. A person has to live with their conscience knowing that they pressed "Go" on a decision based on human intelligence. They also have to live with the consequences that that might mean answering before a criminal court or a higher court for taking that action. Between 7,500 and 10,000 people have been killed by the US and Israeli forces in Iran and Lebanon since the start of the most recent conflict. The deaths of Palestinians in Gaza are nearly tenfold that number, with the figure standing at over 73,000 people. Individual people will be held accountable for these war crimes in the future. Every time an Israeli settler or soldier makes a decision to squeeze the trigger to kill an unarmed Palestinian and every time an American service person directs a smart bomb into a school, they are committing a war crime. The use of autonomous weapons systems removes that liability. It removes any accountability by an individual for unleashing a weapon which will kill and kill until it has accomplished its mission. This is not science fiction: this is science fact. The Ukrainian military has confirmed that two years ago it deployed AI-controlled quadcopter drones known as Terminators on the front line, killing Russian soldiers. The AI model searches for and interprets targets. The maker of the drone said that, "We just launch it and we know everything will be dead – everything that will be found there in this particular area will be dead. There is no connection to the drone at all, you cannot see the video, nothing ... Everything it sees will be killed". This Bill could not have come at a more appropriate time. I commend the Civil Engagement Group on bringing forward this legislation. The restrictions we have seen the US place upon AI models such as Anthropic's Mythos 5 and Fable 5, the export of high-end AI chips and the attempts by the Trump regime to control Anthropic, Palantir and other tech companies is a recognition of the potential for the explosion of autonomous weapons. These, however, are not attempts to rein in the destructive power of autonomous weapons but an attempt to control and stay ahead of every other country on the planet. The advent of autonomous weapons systems predicted in science fiction books and films has arrived. We must now do everything we can not just to control and regulate killing machines but to forbid the development, testing, stockpiling, retention and use of autonomous weapon systems in this jurisdiction and lead the way in eliminating them throughout the world. In time, this Bill may be seen as the first step in a future treaty for the non-proliferation of autonomous weapons. I commend the Bill and its author. Maith sibh. We have an opportunity now to show leadership here and we have started to do so. Tús maith leath na hoibre. The work has started, but we all need to work together now to make sure it continues. I welcome that Fianna Fáil is not blocking this Bill. I urge that it fully support this legislation going through on all Stages in the two Houses. --- 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/2026-06-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:04+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-17