EU-Israel Association Agreement: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28 ============================================================ Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel For the past eight years, the Government has shamefully delayed, blocked and stalled the occupied territories Bill at every single turn, all the while telling the Irish people it is committed to passing the occupied territories Bill through the Oireachtas. It has been pure double-speak to tell the public it will stand up for human rights and international law while in reality the Government sits down after even the slightest resistance. The version of the occupied territories Bill being advanced by the Government is a shadow of the real legislation and, crucially, leaves out sanctions on services, which make up the overwhelming majority of trade with the illegal Israeli settlements. Year after year, Israel commits unspeakable crimes against the Palestinian people. Thousands have been killed in Gaza and countless more have had their homes, lives and futures destroyed by the Israeli war machine. In the West Bank, Palestinians are subjected to an apartheid regime, internment and unrestrained violence by fascist Israeli settlers. We have concrete options at our disposal to punish Israel for its crimes and to provide leadership in the international community, yet our Government is unwilling to offer anything beyond empty words and condemnation. Israel's actions and the Irish Government's inaction are nothing new. We have a do-nothing Government that is doing absolutely nothing to stand up to Israel. If the Government had any backbone or desire to stand up for human rights, it would immediately pass Frances Black’s occupied territories Bill, impose sanctions and stop the UEFA Nations League game against Israel from going ahead. It is absolutely shameful. Instead, what the Government is doing now is cowering in the face of imperialism while doing its best to save face with the Irish people. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael know full well the electorate is resolutely on the side of the Palestinians and cares deeply about the situation in Gaza. The Government wants to offer the bare minimum when it comes to signalling solidarity but without actually taking any form of action. That is why Fianna Fáil Senators have put forward this motion to call on the EU to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. While Fianna Fáil refuses to sanction Israel using any of the powers at its disposal in Government Buildings to actually hold Israel to account, it is happy to offer empty words here in the Seanad. Sinn Féin fully supports the stated intention of this motion, which is to call for the EU-Israel Association Agreement to be suspended. That agreement should have been scrapped a long time ago. That said, it is absolutely shameless to propose this motion when Fianna Fáil and its coalition partners are cowardly sitting on their hands over in Government Buildings when it comes to standing up to Israel. For this reason, Sinn Féin has tabled two amendments to this motion. The first rightly includes a condemnation of the EU's inaction when it comes to Israel's genocide and the openly supportive approach taken by Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and by a number of member states, particularly Germany, which are the second and third largest suppliers of weapons to Israel behind the United States. This motion is correct in that the EU does need to uphold its core values and that the EU can no longer remain silent or inactive as Israel directly goes against these values. However, it is bizarre to me that there is not a word of condemnation for the EU's direct complicity in Israel's actions within this motion. Israel's genocide would not have occurred without the support of the political cover and direct military aid given by European countries and by the European Commission. To not call this out is complete cowardice. Ireland has a responsibility at intergovernmental level when it comes to opposing Israel's actions in supporting the Palestinian people, but bending the knee to Brussels at every opportunity is directly undermining that responsibility. Our second amendment calls on the Government to take decisive action to punish Israel for its illegal and plainly unjust actions. The EU-Israel Association Agreement needs to be suspended at an EU level. I hope the Government is doing everything it can to have that agreement scrapped but that does not justify its refusal to take any action at member state level. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are completely opposed to sanctions being put on the State of Israel at a domestic level, as clearly shown when they voted against a Bill to that effect in the Dáil only the week before last. They have shamefully gutted the occupied territories Bill after delaying it for eight whole years. They are completely unwilling to stop the use of Irish airspace for the transit of weapons bound for Israel. There was mention of Ben-Gvir. In the media and in political discourse, not just here, Ben-Gvir is portrayed as being somehow a rogue outlier, an extremist who is not in line with Israeli society. The reality is Ben-Gvir is not an outlier. He is a racist, aggressive individual who is doing what Israel has done for decades. In 2010, when the Challenger 1 , part of a flotilla bringing humanitarian aid, was intercepted, Irish citizens were brutalised. That was before Ben-Gvir was around. The Israeli state is an apartheid, genocidal rogue state. The reality is that Ben-Gvir is just the ugly face of that state. As far as I can see, the Israeli state is a cancer in world geopolitics. There is a sense that what happened with the flotilla was shocking. I have personal experience of this. Ben-Gvir came into my cell and held ten of us in a corner at gunpoint. --- 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/seanad/2026-05-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:01+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-05-28