Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-07
============================================================

Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown

At the outset I would like to comment on how much I object to having a severely guillotined debate on such a key Bill. Many Bills are being guillotined and rammed through, but this one in particular, having been a promise to the people, is one that deserved more time at every stage.
Speaking specifically to the amendment, like Deputy Murphy, I have no doubt about the intentions. However, members of the Government talk a lot about unintended consequences.
That is all we are trying to catch with this. Multiple amendments were put in that would address the issue. The Minister of State has talked about the percentages, including that 90% is clear. That is the whole point. We know the postcode system will largely work; we are looking for a definition that will catch that small additional percentage that is not clear. The definition in the amendment will do exactly that.
The Minister of State mentioned Spain, where the legislation covers Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory and a link to the EU postcode list. I appreciate that the Netherlands and Belgium are not as far advanced with their legislation but, as it stands, their approach is to do it that way. We all want to make sure we do not in any way penalise Palestinian people through the passage of this legislation. That is all we are trying to do. This really was an issue on which I thought we, Government and Opposition, could easily work together. However, once again, unfortunately, the Government has not shown willing to take it up.

---

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/dail/2026-07-07/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-07