EU-Israel Association Agreement: Motion Seanad Éireann — 2026-05-28 ============================================================ Frances Black (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel I welcome this motion. There is no doubt that the EU-Israel Association Agreement has to be suspended. That is the clear, necessary and legally grounded conclusion from everything we have witnessed. I had the privilege to host a briefing in Leinster House with some of the authors of the Sadaka report, Without Values: None of It Matters, which is an important and forensic analysis of Palestine and Ireland's EU Presidency. I encourage every Member of this House to read it. It is on the Sadaka website. The title alone says everything about where we find ourselves. I know some people have mentioned the reality on the ground in Palestine and I also want to touch on that. We have heard that over 70,000 people have been murdered in Gaza. We do not know how many have been buried under the rubble. The vast majority are civilians, including thousands of children. There is an engineered famine and a ceasefire that has been repeatedly violated. The ICJ has found that genocide has been committed. These are not allegations. These are findings of the world's highest legal body. Last week we saw the Sumud flotilla intercepted in international waters where EU citizens were illegally detained, beaten and sexually assaulted. I spoke to somebody about that this morning. The trauma of that on those civilians, including Irish citizens, has been horrific. However, that was not the worst of it. The worst of it was that while they were being beaten and sexually assaulted they were listening to the screams of Palestinian prisoners in the cells down the road who were being absolutely tortured. We do not know the half of it. We then have Israeli minister Ben Gvir posting videos of their mistreatment on social media. The arrogance of that man is absolutely breathtaking, and the Knesset has now approved the death penalty, as Senator O'Loughlin has said. Today I speak to the amendments I tabled with Senators Stephenson, Higgins and others. We cannot simply wait for the EU consensus that may never come. Our amendment calls on Ireland and like-minded member states to act at national level, and specifically to implement a full and comprehensive ban on all trade with illegal Israeli settlements. This is not a radical ask. The ICJ advisory opinion of July 2024 was unambiguous. All states have an obligation not to render aid or assistance in maintaining Israel's illegal occupation. Trade with settlements does exactly that. This week the Government announced it will bring forward legislation banning the import of goods from illegal settlements. It is eight years in the making. It is eight years since we started this campaign, and it obviously would not have happened without the support of Opposition members here, but also of the unbelievable activists who refused to let the occupied territories Bill die. However, I have to be honest. I am disappointed that what has been announced is a partial ban. The Government will ban physical goods like dates and olives from stolen Palestinian farmland, but it will not ban trade in services. The tech companies, tourism platforms and IT firms that sustain and support the settlements are being let off the hook. This is a deliberate decision and it will seriously undermine the impact of the legislation. The argument that services are legally impossible to include is frankly not credible, to be honest. Last year, as others like my colleague Senator Stephenson have mentioned, the Oireachtas joint committee on foreign affairs, of which Senator O'Loughlin is also a member, heard from the top legal experts in the world. All members, including Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TDs, voted unanimously that services can be included, and Spain has already proved it. Spain passed its own legislation banning trade in certain services with illegal settlements and Spain is bound by the exact same EU law as Ireland. Let me be clear on this. The Government is now saying that Spain has not banned services. What Spain has done is ban the advertising of services. The practical effect amounts to the same thing. It means that companies like Airbnb and Booking.com can no longer list illegal settlement rentals on their website, and this is already being enforced. Spanish authorities wrote to those companies and hundreds of those properties have been removed from the platforms. That is a revenue stream that has been cut off to the illegal settlers by Madrid. It should be cut off in Dublin too. Whether the Government drafts this by banning the trade itself or the advertising of it, does not really matter. What is important is that those listings are removed and Spain has already done it. It did in weeks what we have spent eight years debating. If Spain can include services, why can we not include them? This is not even a new policy tool. In 2014, when Russia occupied the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, Ireland and the EU implemented a ban on trade in both goods and services, and that ban has been in place for 12 years. All we are asking is that we apply the same standard here. If Irish businesses can be required by law to stop providing services to Russian companies tearing up Ukraine, then why can they not be asked to do likewise with Israeli companies tearing apart the West Bank? Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael went into the 2024 election promising to pass the occupied territories Bill in its entirety. In fact, the Taoiseach himself said we are obligated to do so under international law. They said nothing about excluding services then. When the Bill reaches the Dáil floor I will be working with all Opposition parties to table amendments to include services. That has been my position since 2018 and it will not change now. I acknowledge the amendments from Senator Andrews and colleagues about whether Irish airspace is being used to transit weapons bound for Gaza. That is a serious problem for our neutrality and credibility, and the Government has to be transparent on that. On the cultural and sporting measures, I understand the impulse. I want us to be clear. We are targeting state institutions and not individual Israeli citizens. I have watched Ireland say the right things and then fail to follow through. Today, I am asking us to do more than just pass this motion. I am asking Ireland to honour its obligations under international law to pass the occupied territories Bill in full for goods and services, to ban settlement trade, and to show the Palestinian people, the Irish people and the international community that we mean what we say. The people of Gaza are watching. The families on that flotilla are watching. Let us not let them down. --- 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