Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026: Committee and Remaining Stages Seanad Éireann — 2026-07-15 ============================================================ Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland I will not reiterate a huge amount of what has been said. We have been saying for almost a decade that international law obliges us. This is not a lovely gesture or taking a stand in an abstract way, or a gesture of solidarity or even a sanction or boycott; it is compliance with international law. The Minister will be aware of the deep crisis international law is facing at the moment. I think Arundhati Roy described the western liberal order as sitting beneath the rubble in Gaza. International law has been in the firing line in what we have seen in recent years. International law's strength is in its implementation. It is in countries acting and taking it seriously. Ireland has championed international law and said it will be a centrepiece of our values as we enter the EU Presidency, but there is a misalignment between the Minister's understanding of international law, as she has set it out and as the Attorney General has set it out, and what she is actually doing here. The International Court of Justice paragraph 278 is crystal-clear that all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic, trade or investment relations which contribute to the maintenance of the illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. That is clear. That is the Minister's comment on the advisory opinion. The advisory opinion is only the highest authority in the world telling us what the law already was. We said that was the case in 2017, and we were correct. The advisory opinion confirmed an interpretation the Government of that time had resisted. The then Government participated in the historical case that led to the ICJ advisory opinion. Its Attorney General argued in favour of the prohibition of trade and the Minister's comment is, considering the ICJ advisory opinion in the wider context of international law, the only reasonable reading of the opinion is that a complete prohibition on trade with Israeli settlements is required. In relation to being compliant with the ICJ, the Minister said she believed more needs to be done. She has said we are moving towards compliance. The Bill is to provide for compliance by the State with an international legal obligation. That is the first line in the Bill, yet the Minister said, I think, on Committee Stage in the Dáil that this would be partial compliance. There is a real question about knowingly putting forward legislation that is only partially compliant. It is really ambiguous. Others have mentioned constitutionality. It is a problem from a legal perspective, potentially, but certainly from the perspective of commitment to international law. When the Minister spoke on Second Stage, the rationale she gave did not stand up. I will come back to the two-pronged approach. The Minister said the reasons for this approach were that she wanted it to be legally defensible and practically enforceable, and that she was mindful of Ireland's wider economic interests. Where does that sit under international law? Where is the carve-out under international law that says you only do the bits that serve your economic interests? If we have an à la carte approach to international law and say it is okay not to do something because of wider economic interests, what signal does that send to everybody else who has an economic interest that might be suited by breaching, ignoring breaches or being complicit with breaches of international law? It is not acceptable under the law and is not acceptable to the public, who do not want to see bodies on the ground or the many cases we do not have time to go into. I was looking at one case just the last day of a three-month-old whose father begged the Israeli forces to shoot him if they needed to shoot somebody, when they were denying his three-month-old access to an ambulance. On the same day his birth certificate was authorised, he died. That is what is happening in these places we are going to buy services from. If you want to set up a business on that land you have taken and you want to sell services, we are all part of pretending that is okay by some logic. It does not matter if a big company is part of it - it is never okay. The Minister referred to the two-pronged approach to compliance. I will bring amendments later in respect of a timeline for that approach. The problem is when you lower the bar. This is something Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh spoke about eloquently to the committee. The committee heard, as to the practical implementation of it, that the Government can do it and that it is doing it to Russia. Legal experts told us clearly it is legally defensible and, not only that, but it would be useful to legally defend it. That is the point I made earlier. It was useful that countries acted individually and that there were legal cases taken. That forced the EU to act. It is useful when countries take the lead and that gets challenged because it forces the EU to come into compliance. That is also a two-pronged approach, if you want to take leading action that demands a response from the European Union. This is Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh's point. Precedent can be good or bad. Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh talked about the value of precedent by ambitious implementation and ambitious action. She also talked of the danger when you lower the bar in terms of ambition. This is a concern. Ireland is clear on what it wants. It wants services in there. The Government chose to only tackle goods. Of course it contributes to a lowering of the collective ambition at European level if the supposed leaders and champions, who are holding on so tightly to their name as leaders and champions, are saying goods are enough. The Minister told me in the committee that she believes Europe should be banning goods and services. By saying she believes Europe should do that and then setting an example for Europe of only tackling goods, it kind of weakens the message. Can we stop congratulating ourselves on being the first Parliament? We are technically getting around the fact Spain did it by another mechanism. The point is that Spain did it. Senator Black, Conor O'Neill and I, hosted by Lynn Boylan, met with many Spanish parliamentarians a year ago. They listened and they acted. They did it very quickly. It did not take a decade. Spain has acted and has included the advertisement of services, which means it goes beyond goods. The principle of going beyond goods has already been established by Spain and we are rolling it back a bit. There is an amendment in this grouping to at least step up to where Spain is, which takes the important step of breaching the idea that it is goods only. It is a first and important step. We called on other countries to leap forward and do this. Spain put its head above the parapet and then we ducked our heads down a little. That is not good enough. A ban on goods is not good enough. A ban on goods is not compliant, is not strong enough in scale and is not the leadership we should be providing. I will come back later in the discussion to the two-pronged approach because there is a timeline on that if the Minister is serious about compliance and about Ireland's role. --- 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/2026-07-15/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:52:16+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-07-15