Arms lobbyist also director of operations for airline transporting IDF munitions
The operations manager for a group that lobbies government for Lockheed Martin is also director of flight operations for an Irish airline shipping weapons to the Israel Defense Forces.
Oisín Green holds positions with both lobbyist group Irish Defence and Security Association (IDSA) and ASL Airlines Ireland – which, as of January, continues to transport munitions to Israel despite previous claims it had stopped.
Green, a former Irish soldier who served as a peacekeeper in Lebanon, is both a flight operations director and captain at ASL. He joined ASL as a pilot in 2010 and is a qualified instructor in handling hazardous goods.
He also works with IDSA, lobbying government on behalf of weapons manufacturers. Some of them, such as Swedish company Saab, have been implicated in human rights abuses.
IDSA told clients that there would be “no advance publicity or social media promotion” and asked them not to forward details beyond fellow members. After the meeting, those who participated were invited for “closed door” conversations with senior officials from the Department of Defence.
‘Foster openness and transparency for all’
Green plays an integral role arranging meetings between the state and Irish Defence and Security Association clients, which include international arms dealers, and the state.
He also helped arrange a meeting between IDSA members and European Defence Agency chief executive Jiří Šedivý. The Department of Defence will not say who attended.
After The Ditch's February 2024 story on IDSA's refusal to disclose its membership despite lobbying government multiple times on defence policy, Green emailed clients in April announcing plans to list them online.
A month later, he sent further correspondence. “IDSA has joined two new trade associations in the defence and security sectors, ASD and ENDR. Placing our member’s logos and the logos of the associations IDSA are members of will be in keeping with ASD and ENDR and foster openness and transparency for all,” he wrote.
Green previously told The Ditch, in response to a question about a lack of transparency from the lobbying group, "Information about who are members of the IDSA is available in the public domain.”
Green was involved in weapons procurement projects for the Defence Forces during his time as an officer instructor at the Military College from 2001 to 2004, including the introduction of the Javelin Missile System and upgrades to anti-tank systems, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Before working with IDSA and ASL Airlines, Green founded a drone company in 2007, dissolving it in 2018. He told Fora in 2016 that though he had served as a peacekeeper in Lebanon, setting up a drone business was “the hardest thing” he had ever done. In the same interview, Green also discussed the death of an Irish soldier in an attack that came from an IDF and South Lebanon Army compound shortly prior to his deployment in Southern Lebanon.
"Several months before I arrived (Irish private) Billy Kedian was killed by mortar fire from an Israeli post after making sure that everyone got to a bunker ahead of him," Green said.
"It brought things into stark contrast – what we were doing and how dangerous it could be. There was full-blown fire from the time we arrived, constant bombing – morning, noon and night – mainly from the Israeli side from the time they withdrew under artillery and aircraft fire.”
ASL Ireland, one of Green's current employers, uses a subsidiary company to carry deliveries containing parts for the F-35 fighter jets the IDF uses to bomb Gaza.
IDSA and Oisin Green have been contacted for comment.