Sanctions against the State of Israel Bill 2025: Second Stage [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-05-14 ============================================================ Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire I thank the people in the Gallery for sitting through all of that, particularly the comments of those in government. One thing I think they should know is that the senior Minister does not normally come in to take these Thursday debates. The reason she did is because the people in the Gallery are here and because there will, I hope, be tens of thousands of people on the streets again on Saturday, as there have been month in, month out for the past three years as a result of the slaughter being visited on the Palestinian people. After what they have heard today, I hope people will also mobilise next Wednesday outside the gates of the Dáil when the vote on this Bill is due to take place. We should not give up on exerting the kind of pressure that brought the Minister in here. Normally, as stated, senior Ministers do not come in for these Thursday debates. The Minister came in because of the pressure that people are exerting on the Government. This Government is under pressure. I want to again thank Senator Frances Black, who also sat through all of this debate, and she has sat through a lot over the past ten years or so listening to promises about how the Government was going to progress her Bill, and it never happens. I do not know. Deputy Paul Murphy and I were debating whether the Government is ever going to pass it or whether it will just pass it and then dilute it to such a point that it will have no impact. That is the space we are in. The Government's tactic does seem to be to speak out of both sides of its mouth. There was a bit of the Minister's speech that was designed to make it look as if the Government is concerned and cares, but the bottom line, as has already been said, is that the Government will "not be supporting the Bill in its current form". It is not too late; if the Government is saying that the Bill needs a few amendments, the Minister of State should not call the vote now. The senior Minister has left because, at the end of this, the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach will ask if this Bill to impose economic sanctions and break off economic, trade and finance relations with the State of Israel because of its involvement in genocide, apartheid and multiple breaches of international law and human rights is agreed. Second Stage will be agreed unless the Minister of State says "Not agreed". That is what is going to happen. Despite all the 15 or 20 pages of the Minister's speech, and all the crocodile tears, the Minister of State is, I assume, going to say "Not agreed". If the Government does not say that, we moved forward towards the imposition of sanctions. We have set out that we believe it is clear, from the ICJ rulings in previous cases and from the case law around genocide, that all signatories of the Genocide Convention have an obligation to act to prevent and punish the crime of genocide, the worst crime a state or anybody can commit. It has been committed, and the Irish Government has said - it took a while, but eventually - that it believes it has been committed and yet, it is refusing its obligations to do what is in its power to impose those sanctions. Let us be absolutely clear. Israel will not stop killing Palestinians. It will not stop its genocidal campaign against them, its illegal occupation of their land and the brutal siege of Gaza. Millions of Palestinians live in refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and all across the Middle East, whose forebears were driven out in the act of ethnic cleansing in 1948 known as the Nakba, the 78th anniversary of which is this year. The State of Israel will not stop committing the crimes it has been committing since 1948 unless it is stopped. That is clear. Surely, it is clear. It will not stop unless it is stopped. If we continue to treat it as a normal state, why would it stop? All the evidence suggests the opposite. All the evidence is that if you allow it to act with impunity, it becomes emboldened. It goes further, and what it does gets worse. The genocidal horror does not improve, and being nice to Israel does not make it a little better. It gets worse and is emboldened by the impunity it enjoys. We are now at a point where there is no crime, horror, obscenity or atrocity that the Israeli regime is not willing to commit blatantly and flagrantly and to crow about the commission of these crimes. Some of the stuff is just beyond belief. I refer to some of the statements these people have made. To give the Minister of State some examples, in February 2025, the deputy speaker of the Knesset said that all adults in Gaza should be killed. He described all Palestinians as scum. Imagine if the Leas-Cheann Comhairle said that about any group. What would we think? That is what the Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the Knesset said about Palestinians. This is not a normal regime. The Government draws a distinction between the occupied territories and says, "Oh, we accept that is wrong". To trade with an occupied territory most certainly is wrong. It is prohibited under international law. Who directs the brutal, illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, however? The State of Israel directs it. Who directed the illegal siege of Gaza that has gone on for 17 years, which leads them to even kidnap people bringing humanitarian aid from this country and around the world on the high seas and in international waters? Who directs that? The Israeli state directs it. Who directs the bombardment of Lebanon and the reoccupation of southern Lebanon? The Israeli state does it and successive Israeli governments - not just this one - have done it. They have been doing it since 1948. Every single Israeli Government has done it. I am not saying there is not a minority of people in Israel who are opposed but the opinion polls are clear. The vast majority of people in the Israeli state support what the Israeli regime is doing, and it always has. I lived there. The reason the Minister of State has to put up with me in this House is because I went there. I was not political; I went there when I was 18 years of age and I stumbled into the first Palestinian intifada. I was horrified. When I was there, there was no armed resistance by Palestinians. They were young people protesting against the apartheid regime and against the fact that they had been living in refugee camps all of their lives. Their families had been driven out in 1948, and they were protesting on the streets. The worst act of violence they committed was to throw stones at the Israeli military, the fourth most powerful military in the world, and they were brutally shot down and beaten down. As for armed resistance, the development of Hamas even as an armed wing did not happen until years after that. It was the brutality of the regime. It was not willing to give an inch on the brutal system of apartheid. The Israeli regime had made it clear; it wanted to further expand the borders of Israel. It wants to drive the Palestinians out. The intent of the regime is genocidal. Are we going to do anything about that? If we do not, it is not going to stop. What the Government is saying is that we cannot do it unless the European Union says it is okay. We know Germany, as we speak, is a major provider of arms to the regime committing this genocidal horror. I have not mentioned Daniel Tatlow-Devally, an Irish citizen who has been imprisoned since, I think, last September and treated as if he is a terrorist because he took direct action against Elbit Systems, the main provider of weapons from Germany to Israel to allow it to commit the crimes we have seen in Gaza and elsewhere. He is being treated like a terrorist, and his family are begging the Irish Government to send observers to the trial, which is a show trial, a travesty and a disgrace. The doublespeak is clear. The Government will not send an observer. It will not call for a boycott of the football match, and we discovered this week that €20 million worth of technology licences have been approved by the Irish Government and are going to the Israeli military, which is carrying out all these atrocities. Then there is Shannon Airport and the US military, which is up to its neck in complicity with Israel, providing it with all the weapons - weapons allowed to go through Irish airspace by the Irish Government. We are up to our necks in complicity. That is why we are doing nothing. I ask the Government to pull back. We have an obligation, as a former colony, to stand with people suffering this sort of genocidal horror and colonial oppression. I ask the Minister of State to end the complicity and not to stand up and say "Not agreed". Do the right thing. --- 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/2026-05-14/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:56+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-14