Trade Agreements
Dail Éireann — 2026-05-21
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Richard Boyd Barrett (PBP), Dún Laoghaire

Just a few days ago every single one of the Irish Global Sumud aid flotilla activists put out a video while they were on the boats, before they were kidnapped, asking the Government to support a sanctions Bill last night. The Government, after issuing statements condemning their kidnapping and abuse at the hands of the violent settler, Itamar Ben-Gvir, trooped in here and voted against a Bill proposing sanctions against the State of Israel, having said just before that there should be no business-as-usual with the Israeli regime. That regime is guilty not just of the abuse of the flotilla activists, which is disgusting and has given us a glimpse of its barbarism, but also the brutality that is inflicted on the Palestinian prisoners who are tortured and abused. There is a genocide in Gaza, there is ethnic cleansing happening, there is apartheid and there is brutal suppression of rights, and the Government voted against imposing sanctions on them when the activists on the flotilla appealed to the Government to vote for it. The Government is gaslighting the Irish public.

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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/2026-05-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:58+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-05-21