G7

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 11th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Iraq has always faced the challenge of having Sunni, Shi’a and Kurdish populations. It requires politics and a political leader who can bring them together and make sure that everyone feels part of the whole. That has not always been the case with Maliki’s Government. It needs to be; otherwise, we will see more breakdowns such as the one that has happened in the last 24 hours.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Prime Minister for his commitment especially to the new measure to enable prosecution of those who train for terrorism abroad. Dissident republicans have sourced explosives and weapons from terrorists in the middle east and they have also been trained in certain parts of the world, including the middle east. What actions will the Prime Minister, the Government and the G7 take to address this issue, given that there are pockets of support across the Republic of Ireland for dissident republicans?

[The Prime Minister]

First, let me make it absolutely clear that laws that we pass in this House to combat terrorism apply to dissident republicans or people on the other side of the divide who take up arms for terror, just as they apply to anybody else. The actions that we are taking to try to stop the leakage of weapons, explosives and techniques from these broken countries into the UK apply just as much to the problems that we could have in Northern Ireland as to those that could occur anywhere else.