“The amount of people that are being killed today by military hardware has just gone off the Richter scale. The five biggest producers of arms, or exporters of arms, in the last five years were the US, Russia, China, Germany and France. And sadly, you have to ask yourself, if you look and ask how many repressive autocratic regimes in this region that France has not sold arms to, it’s a difficult question.”

“Because they have sold to Kazakhstan, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkmenistan, Turkey, Pakistan.”

“Well, my niece said to me, on Saturday morning, that, for the first time in her life, she got an idea of what it must be like to live in the Middle East because it happens on a regular basis, what happened in Paris. Can you imagine it? That you couldn’t go to a concert, or a restaurant or a bar but you might be afraid to be killed. And this is what these people are facing all the time.”

“And last year, we gave permits for 190 metric tonnes of bullets to go to Afghanistan. Now, I don’t imagine that they did much good, in terms of peace. 2.5million troops have gone through Shannon since 2001, huge amounts of military armoury have gone through Shannon since 2001, and huge amounts have been overflown. And we are OK with that.”

“As long as the arms industry, and the shares have gone up 4% on average in the last three days in the arms industry, it’s a good weekend for them. Because it looks like there’s going to be even more arms used.

“President Hollande said, we are going to lead a war which will be pitiless. But they’re already bombing ISIS and others. They’re giving guns and arms to Saudi Arabia, who are giving them to ISIS, as are the United Arab Emirates, they give arms and guns to anyone that will fight Assad. Western countries are arming both sides.”

“We have created ISIS but we’re not going to defeat the military of ISIS. Only Iraq and Syria will actually eventually defeat ISIS. They want France to react in a strong military fashion. That’s what they want. They don’t want us to take a peaceful position on it and to stop militarising the area. They don’t want us to take a rational position on it. We are feeding them with this whole militarisation of the region.”

Independent TD Mick Wallace in the Dáil earlier this evening.

Related: Extent of Shannon and Ireland’s Complicity in War Revealed (Shannonwatch)

Thanks Oireachtas Retort