Schoolgirls buy arms to expose lax trade laws

SEVEN Portlaoise schoolgirls have set themselves up as an international arms firm successfully brokering deals from South Korean and South African dealers in a bid to expose Ireland's lack of brokering controls.

The seven sixth-year students partook in the project for a forthcoming Channel 4 Dispatches programme with Mark Thomas. They were so convincing that they were asked to act as Irish agents for the South Korean arms firm.

Displaying imported leg shackles and film of a successfully traded 500,000-volt stun baton at a Dublin press conference yesterday, the students called on the Government to swiftly introduce legislation to curb arms brokering.

Brokering, or the facilitation of arms deals, is legally controlled by all EU nations bar Ireland - despite the fact that the Irish economy now generates €4 billion annually in arms-related exports.

"If it's so easy for us to do it, it just proves there's definitely others doing it," said 18-year-old Laura Kearns.

"We need a system of control so anybody who brokers arms must have a Government licence," she said.

Fellow pupil Clare Coleman, aged 17, said the Government was allowing brokers to facilitate sales to "dictators, torturers and corrupt police states".

"We can do this without a care in the world for the legal consequences," she said.

Sister Barbara Raftery from the Portlaoise's Presentation Secondary School, said Italian, French and Belgian brokers who can't operate in their own country could "board a plane to Ireland for the law to become meaningless".

The Irish Government has been promising new arms trade and brokering legislation for years. Human rights groups fear failure to bring forward the legislation before the next general election in 15 months will scotch years of effort and campaigning.

Channel 4's Mark Thomas said no EU nation had introduced legislation comprehensive enough to ensure that arms brokering was properly controlled.

"All the EU countries could tighten up the legal loopholes and they all have a legal obligation to do so. If we can achieve that ... then that would be the first stepping stone to an arms trade treaty," he said.