I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. Broadly, we in the Social Democrats welcome the Bill and its efforts to modernise, align and work towards just transitions in the environmental and digital spaces. I will touch on some of the positive aspects before I share some of my major concerns regarding the Bill. These positives include the increased grant thresholds, as well as easier approval and a stronger focus on the development of environmentally friendly initiatives. Sections of this Bill also give clarity to the IDA and Enterprise Ireland, allowing them to complete their goals with greater efficiency. Those measures are certainly welcome. The farming land solar panel scheme had excellent take-up and demand but only enough funding for roughly 10% of the requests. We need to scale up the investment available in renewable energies, and this Bill works towards that goal. Further budgetary funding, though, is required to get to the green transition that Ireland needs. Other provisions in the Bill are also welcome but I want to focus my remaining time on a big issue that my party has with this legislation. Section 8 of this Bill is a disgraceful attempt to allow the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to invest in and promote military investments, despite our national policy of military neutrality. It would allow this investment to take place without governmental approval. It peels back checks and balances on the choices made by these agencies which use taxpayers' money. The Bill states that Enterprise Ireland and the IDA would be able to make investments and engage in partnerships without that oversight. The Bill does not make any regulations to replace the currently-required Government approval. In addition, it is important to mention that military applications of AI are not governed by the incoming EU AI Act. This is something that we have discussed in the past number of weeks at the Oireachtas AI committee. What that does is create a gaping hole in the regulations here as the IDA and Enterprise Ireland are facing no controls and no accountability. It is clear that when this goes wrong and an unconscionable investment is made, we will see the Government acting as if it had no role in legislation that allowed shame and scandal to come to our nation. This is a rapidly evolving space in so many different areas and the response from the Government is one of hands-off. This decision to allow the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to make these investments is only explicable in the context of wider trends internationally. The Government seeks to allow this investment because at a time of war and uncertainty, it wants State agencies to essentially cash in. It is wrong to invest in weapons of war when Ireland could be a beacon of hope and peace. These agencies are not in need of those new markets to sell to. It is an ideological decision and a serious disservice to the workers in the IDA and Enterprise Ireland. As I mentioned, we have been discussing this in the AI committee in recent weeks because much of the defence and arms industry is looking towards AI and the tools that are deployed in war. We have discussed how that governance happens and I want to read from the contribution of one of our witnesses, Ms Rosanna Fanni, a Belgian academic who is an expert in this space. She said, "The EU AI Act excludes any uses of AI for defence and security purposes, mainly because of the treaties and the non-responsibility of the EU to act upon these things. This also comes to the point I made about the importance of national approaches.". Commenting on the use of non-kinetic AI systems in defence, she went on to say that it "relies heavily on non-state actors, namely private companies. Those private companies may sometimes also have different interests or may not be 100% aligned with the national values, so to speak, especially with regard to Ireland's principle of neutrality.". In his opening comments the senior Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, explained the change in regard to section 8 and said that it "does not affect existing Government policy on military neutrality". I want to see more detail on that. I have to be assured that this does not compromise Ireland's neutrality but I just do not believe that is the case. I appreciate that this fits into the broader European move towards a European defence union. Those are not hyperbolic words from me. That is the specific language that is used by the European Commission. Indeed, I asked the European Commissioner for Budget, Anti-Fraud, and Public Administration, Mr. Serafin, about this at the Oireachtas European affairs committee and it is clear that the multi-annual financial framework is pivoting towards military spending. It will favour companies that spend money developing arms across Europe. As a result, it will favour the larger countries and member states in the European Union. For me, this is a move away from social cohesion, democracy and all of the values that we hold dear in the European Union. There is no reason for Ireland to play into that. We can resist it. We can hold true to our neutrality and to our values of human rights, solidarity and compassion and push back against this draw towards militarism in every way, in terms of our neutrality and defence policy but also when it comes to industrial development and enterprise. I will be tabling amendments on Committee Stage in relation to this. That said, I reiterate that we welcome the Bill overall and will be working closely to make sure we get those points in.

Sentiment score: 0.21