Proposed Legislation
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-05
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Paul Murphy (PBP), Dublin South-West

Why has the Attorney General's advice changed? What legally has changed? The ICJ decision that all states must abstain from entering into economic and trade dealings and prevent trade or investment relations with Israel stands. That was the basis on which the previous advice of the Attorney General was made. In the previous advice of the Attorney General, he made no distinction between goods and services because legally in international law there is no distinction between trade in goods and services. Instead, he made the point that it would be a political choice to exclude services. The Government is making a political choice to exclude services to bow down before what Trump is asking for. Micheál Martin is quite open about it when he says it in the Dáil. Simon Harris tries to hide it a little bit but Micheál Martin is completely open; I can quote it.
The Government is watering this down and reneging on an election promise made by both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It is trying to find some legal advice to hide behind. It does not work because Spain, an EU country, is implementing a ban on services traded with the occupied territories. How can Spain do it under European law and yet the Irish Government is not able to do it?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-05