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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Michael McDowell (IND), National University of Ireland

I welcome the Minister and acknowledge, as others have done, the central role Senator Black has played in bringing this issue before these Houses and the Irish people. It is sometimes forgotten what happened in 2018.
The only reason this House passed the occupied territories Bill was because the Fianna Fáil Party was, at that stage, party to a supply and confidence agreement with Fine Gael and did not feel itself obliged to support the Government's position on the Bill that was put before the House by Senator Frances Black and others at the time. Fianna Fáil supported her Bill at the time. Let us remember this. Without a peep out of them, they supported it. I want to say that not to recriminate with people here but to say that the Bill was passed by this House and then we had the advice of the Attorney General at the time to the effect that the Bill could not go any further in Dáil Éireann because it needed a money message from the Government and the Taoiseach. The suggestion was that because we might be open to some kind of EU sanction if we passed the legislation in both Houses, the Government was told that it was entitled to invoke the money message provision of the Constitution, and we had other objections thrown up too. Let us be clear about this: at the time there was a real public debate about whether there was or was not a valid reason to distinguish between goods and services. At the time, the great preponderance of legal opinion expressed was along the lines that the view taken by the Attorney General in respect of services was wrong. Let us be clear about that. As a former Attorney General, I know one thing: if you say there is a danger that something might happen, it is leapt on by some people in government to say, "The Attorney General has said we cannot do it". I want to make it very clear that if the Attorney General actually says, "This is manifestly illegal or unconstitutional", or whatever, that is one thing, but if we have some milk and watery opinion expressing views about the dangers and risks, that is a very different thing. It is a very different thing because it gives carte blanche to timid politicians or the like, or politicians who do not want to comply with the clear majority. Let us remember, going back to the supply and confidence period, that Fianna Fáil and the Opposition parties in the Dáil all could have passed that legislation were it not for the attitude taken by the Government. I just want to put all that on the record.
I also want to put on the record that those of us in this House who supported the Bill, people like Senator Black, myself, Ivana Bacik and David Norris, were immediately attacked as antisemites by the crooks and extremists who constitute a significant portion of the Israeli Government. This was an outrageous defamation of decent people who have always supported the right of Israel to exist within its recognised boundaries. We were accused of antisemitism to brand us with a kind of Nazi opposition to the Jewish people. This was done, and has been done consistently over the last number of years. America is one of the sources of that defamation of the people of Ireland. We have been told that we have an antisemitic streak in us. We do not. There is not any evidence of antisemitism in all of this. Any Government run by the corrupt President of the United States, Donald Trump, that appoints Mike Huckabee to be its ambassador in Jerusalem and encourages the extreme Zionists to be more and more unjust, murderous and expropriationary in relation to the Palestinian people should be ashamed of itself. I hear there are proposals that President Trump may come to Ireland. I do not care what he does in Doonbeg but if he puts his toe outside it I hope there is a massive demonstration by the Irish people to say we do not share his values; we want justice for the Palestinian people and we do not want his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his pals rebuilding the Gaza Strip as an American enclave on the Mediterranean. We do not want any further expansion of Israel in breach of international law and we want to make it very clear that threats of tariffs, threats of retaliation or threats of any kind do not wash with us. We have the right as a sovereign independent people to stand up for what is right.

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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