Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026: Second Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-08
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Frances Black (IND), Industrial and Commercial Panel

The Minister is welcome to the Chamber. To be honest, it is difficult to know where to begin with this speech because colleagues across the House and those who are watching from outside will know how important the occupied territories Bill has been to me over the past eight years and to my really good friend and colleague, Mr. Conor O'Neill, who was one of the original drafters of the Bill, along with Mr. Gerry Liston, the human rights lawyer. It was a privilege to work alongside Mr. O'Neill on this Bill.
It has taken a long time and a huge amount of work by many incredible organisations and activists to even get to this point.
There is a lot to say about the Bill before us. I will get to the technical detail in due course. First, I want to focus on what matters most, namely the human element of an injustice that is so stark that it should move the world to real and tangible action.
On the night of 14 March 2026, Ali Khaled Bani Odeh, tired from working long hours in construction, was finally home to mark the end of Ramadan with his wife, Waad, and their young family. His four sons, aged five to 11, were excited to see their father for the first time in over a month. They wanted something sweet and persuaded their parents to take them out for a drive to go for doughnuts, the kind of simple innocent request that any parent, any one of us, would recognising saying yes to. The second youngest child, Othman, was just six years of age. He was blind and unable to walk or feed himself and was sitting on his mother's lap in the front seat of the car. She asked her husband to pull over and take him briefly so that she could get something from a bag on the floor. As he did so, the boys noticed lasers shining in the car windows. Waad screamed. Ali, knowing what was coming, began to pray. Israeli soldiers opened fire on the family, spraying the car with bullets. They killed both parents and the two youngest children. A beautiful family of six was gunned down for absolutely nothing. They were massacred simply driving home after buying doughnuts. Why? There was absolutely no reason.
The two eldest brothers survived. Khaled, aged 11, described finding his siblings blood coated on his shoes. The younger of the two, Mustafa, is only eight. He told paramedics that he tried to pull his five-year-old brother towards him to protect him before realising that he was already dead. The two surviving boys are orphans now. Nothing will ever bring their parents or siblings back. I think of my grandchildren - I know we all think of our children and grandchildren - and how it is that we accept a world in which Palestinian people are treated as expendable. None of the Israeli soldiers who killed them and showed such sickening disregard for human life and dignity will ever face justice. There will be no real investigation and no trial. If that was in any other country, all hell would break loose.
I tell this story because it matters a thousand times more than any abstract legal principle and because it is not an isolated incident. This is the daily reality of life in occupied Palestine under a brutal and rotten system of apartheid, where there is absolutely no accountability, justice and certainly no peace. I have seen it with my own eyes in Hebron, Sheikh Jarrah and Masafer Yatta. It is something I will never forget. You cannot forget it. It is something I refuse to turn away from. The violence and cruelty are not an accidental by-product of the system; they are is actually its engine.
Right across the West Bank, Israeli settlers continue to attack, kill and displace Palestinians with near total impunity. Farmlands are being seized, homes are being stolen and illegal settlements are being established. The Government, the EU, the UN and the international courts repeatedly insist that this is totally illegal, but refuse to take the action needed to stop it. In fact, by continuing to trade with those settlements, we help to keep the show on the road. Whether we like it or not, until this obvious economic support ends - and I mean all of it, including goods and services - we will remain complicit. This is why, with my colleagues in the Seanad Civil Engagement Group, I first tabled the occupied territories Bill in 2018 to insist on a very simple principle, namely that no Irish company should profit from or contribute to war crimes that are happening on a daily basis. I cannot believe that standard has been so hard to get agreement on.
We must and should be clear. The Bill before the House is not the occupied territories Bill I tabled; it is a weaker measure which, sadly, does not meet our moral or legal obligations. Goods from the settlements should be banned - of course they should be - and were included in my original Bill for that reason. I also have a responsibility to be really honest here and state clearly that this Bill is not enough. About 70% of Ireland's external trade is in services and by exempting these flows from the Bill, the Government is implementing a trade ban that deliberately omits the vast majority of Irish trade. It is consciously letting large companies providing tech, IT and other service-based trade off the hook. That is an absolute tragedy.
If we are serious about opposing the settlements - an absolute minimum measure - then we should be doing it right. In fact, we should be doing so much more. Let me focus briefly on the law. In July 2024, the ICJ held that the occupation is illegal. The settlements built on Palestinian land are illegal. As a result, all countries, including Ireland, have a positive legal obligation to trade with them. The court made no distinction between trade and in physical goods like fruit and vegetables on the one hand and intangible services like tech and IT on the other. A euro of support is a euro of support. The ICJ was clear that it all should end.
This is not just my position, it is also the position of the Government. In June 2026, it stated that considering the ICJ advisory opinion in the wider context of international law, the only reasonable reading is that a complete prohibition on trade with Israeli settlements is required. On Committee Stage in the Dáil, the Minister said she accepts accepted that the obligation to ban trade includes goods and services and that a ban on both is needed in order to be fully compliant with the ICJ ruling. Therefore, the Bill instead only brings us towards compliance or into partial compliance with our obligations under international law. We need to reckon with the reality of what this means.
It is not just a case of making some progress and seeing what else we can do in the future. We are talking about firm, binding obligations under international law, something that Article 29 of the Constitution makes clear ought to be the guiding principle of our foreign policy. The Government is knowingly passing legislation that it accepts does not meet this standard. That means we will remain in breach of our obligations under international law by choice. The hope is that a full EU-wide ban on goods and services will be agreed in Brussels. I say with complete sincerity that I hope this will happen. I wish the Minister and her team every good luck with this important work, beginning with the EU Foreign Affairs Council on Monday. However, the inarguable reality accepted by the Government is that until such a ban is delivered, if it ever comes, we will choose not to comply with international law at a time when the rule of law globally is being eroded. This is a deeply worrying message to send.
The Government's arguments as to why it will not include services in the Bill have been well ventilated in the Dáil and at the foreign affairs committee. We will do our best to address them by way of amendment on Committee Stage. The reality is that they simply do not stack up. The world's leading legal experts have made it very clear that the same public policy exemption in EU law can be relied on to ban trade in services, just as it can for goods. Regardless of how the Government wants to frame or pitch it, the Spanish legislation, as others have said, restricts trade in services. There has been no pushback at EU level or no legal issue. US companies can continue to operate there. The sky has not fallen in; of course it has not.
The idea that services are too complicated to measure or track is undermined by the fact that we have done it already. As I have said many times, in 2014 we did this with Russian occupied territory, and rightly so. Ultimately, this is a political decision and a missed opportunity. Crucially, it is not the last one. As soon as the House resumes after the summer recess, I will table legislation to extend the ban to include services. We will keep going as long as we need to until our moral and legal obligations are met.
I want to close by sincerely thanking the incredible network of organisations and activists I have worked with over the past few years right across Ireland and, of course, in Palestine. They have forced the political system to lurch forward by sheer persistence. That is not an easy thing to do. So many people have put their heart and soul into this, and I could go on saying their names forever. My message to them today is that we will keep going until the right standard is met, no matter how long it takes.
I have said to the Minister already that none of us will be free until the Palestinian people are free. That is absolutely vital.
I really hope that today the Minister understands how frustrated I have been over the past eight years. I know she is committed to this issue, but we really need serious, tangible action.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-07-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:10+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-08