Prohibition of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems Bill 2026: Second Stage Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-17 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I thank the Minister of State for her response and congratulate her on her appointment. I am glad the Government is not opposing this Bill. I am very happy to continue to engage. Stephen Reid, the drafter of the Bill, who I thank, is also very keen and willing to engage. In bringing this Bill forward, we are very much aware of the international process and the timeliness of the Bill. I reject the suggestion that it is not timely; it is extremely timely. A couple of crucial points are coming, with the discussions of the group of government experts taking place in September and the meeting in November on the conventional weapons treaty, at which it will be decided whether action will be taken. In the background, we know that if there is a failure to move forward on this issue and bring it within the remit of the conventional weapons treaty as an international instrument because, which requires consensus, there will be pressure, rightly, for action through a stand-alone global treaty. There has already been pressure in the resolutions passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations. That process is under way and it is my belief that Ireland will go into that process and those discussions stronger in a context where we can say national legislation has been discussed and that the Government is, rightly, under pressure as a result of ambitious national legislation. In this case, there is something different from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty negotiations, which occurred in a context where nuclear weapons were not being used every day. The reason there is a particular urgency with this is that we know these treaty processes take time. I am very happy to work on the definitions as we come through it, but we also need to be strong in pushing those definitions. There are huge, dangerous areas of wiggle room here. What will meaningful human control mean in the final definitions? Will that be diluted? As regards the idea that there may be certain areas where it cannot be used in compliance with international humanitarian law, what will that mean in effect? Will it deal only with the targets or those contexts that we have talked about? Will it deal with the inadvertent contexts? The fact that the targeting was of a military target does not excuse someone because it may have been a military target on a road shared with civilians. There are huge nuances and questions in this regard. Those definitions matter and need to be teased out but it needs to be done from a position of ambition and strength. We do not wait to see what falls out; we go in to shape what is going to come out of that process. If what is shaped from the process in terms of the conventional weapons is not ambitious enough, then Ireland will need to lead on a global treaty. Ireland will also need to lead, if that treaty process is too prolonged, by taking national action, which can then be amended. Not only am I open to my Bill being amended as it progresses, but if there is an international treaty that takes two or three years, we cannot be in a lacuna in the meantime. This is different. We were told these weapons would make everything more precise. More than 20,000 have been killed by the most advanced targeting technology in the world and it chose to allow the killing of 20,000 children. What we have increasingly seen is that these weapons do not allow target selection to be narrowed; what they do is around expansion. It is effective, not in the sense of narrowing what is done, but in the sense of "maximum lethality". That is the industry phrase. It describes 1,000 deaths where, in the past, there could have been 100 or 50 deaths. That is the context. We cannot afford to have inaction from Ireland or even just to wait for the international processes at UN level when the decisions that are fanning the flames of this process are being made. I will highlight four issues. While Ireland has the Presidency, the multi-annual financial framework, which is going to give a huge amount of money to military and defence spending, will be negotiated and decided. The new European security strategy will be negotiated. Ireland is hosting a European conference on AI in September. The Horizon funding will negotiated. What we do not want is for all those decisions to get made without any governance framework around military use of AI and autonomous weapons. We do not want money being directed that way. I urge that the security strategy reaffirm the position on cluster munitions and landmines, to which, sadly, some of the SAFE funding has gone. We become complicit in spending money collectively at European level if that money goes to these weapons and we allow Horizon money to be invested in their development or allow industry supports to AI that allow the industry to develop these weapons. We do not want that money to be spent and that momentum to occur while we are waiting to progress the international treaty. That is why it matters that Ireland, as a neutral country, goes into those negotiations saying that while we want international action, we have a national concern and national action which we want to be reflected in the collective European decisions. Ireland being strong on this and showing leadership on it cannot wait two, three or four years while we see the vulnerable of the world used as laboratory targets. I welcome the offer of engagement and I accept it. The Minister of State mentioned the new definition and the components that make it up. The technological components are in the new definitions. It is not the same as dual use, solely. It is where those components are the building blocks and have been shown to be the building blocks. The Minister of State described it herself. It is a building block to build these weapons and we need to legislate against the building blocks, rather than simply say, "We sent you the Lego and you put it together into an autonomous weapon gun". We need to tackle those, especially as Ireland is already vulnerable on this given our sad exposure to complicity in relation to dual-use goods. This is one dual-use area where we absolutely need to draw a red line. I thank the Minister of State and all who spoke in support of the 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/2026-06-17/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:04+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-17