Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026: Report and Final Stages Dail Éireann — 2026-07-07 ============================================================ Neale Richmond (FG), Dublin Rathdown I have no doubt the Deputy was. I was merely a second-year arts student following Deputy Murphy's lead. In this area, when we talk about what other member states are doing, Slovenia does not have legislation. That is crucial here. I remember sitting with the then Slovenian foreign minister at the Foreign Affairs Council last year. She came up to me and asked, "What are you doing in Ireland? How can we follow your lead?" Unfortunately, that Slovenian Government lost the most recent election, and I say "unfortunately" because its members were good working partners. The Deputy can call them our buddies or "chums" but they were really good working partners who wanted to work in this area. At the same time, the consistent Spanish minister said Spain was looking through options and opportunities where it could do this on a domestic basis. As has been said, the Spanish Government provided a very clear amendment to Spain's consumer protection legislation by royal decree. We do not have royal decrees in this jurisdiction. That amendment has only been in place for a number of months so it has not faced the full rigours of a challenge yet, but I am of the understanding that 60 or 70 advertisements have been taken down since it came in. It is important to provide that context. I understand the points the Deputies made and I do not necessarily disagree with them, but that is the context of what is happening in other jurisdictions. A point is repeatedly and understandably made about our compliance with the ICJ opinion. Of course, the Government has a key responsibility to make sure any legislation we produce is fully in order for our Statute Book. The 2024 advisory opinion we are all familiar with finds that Israel's occupation of occupied Palestinian territory is, of course, unlawful. That is why they are called occupied territories. However, the court does not, therefore, distinguish between goods and services. It leaves it to the states to determine what steps they should take. As Deputies stated, and as was discussed at length in committee, the Minister, Deputy McEntee, has made clear that we are taking a very clear twin-track approach. First, we are doing what we can do on goods, which is what we promised to do in the programme for Government. We put that through pre-legislative and Committee Stage and we are debating it here and will debate it in the Seanad. We are clearly bringing in legislation that impacts on goods. On what we are doing on EU level, Deputy Smith rightly cited the issues in relation to Russia and Crimea and, of course, that was agreed at EU level. That was how we were able to do it so quickly and strongly and with widespread support from the House. No doubt, when the 21st sanction package of the EU is brought forward, we should get the vast majority of the House’s support as well. Deputies Gibney and O’Gorman referred to our constitutional obligations. I simply reject Deputy Gibney’s assertion that we are not in compliance with the full ICJ judgment. I will outline the reasons, if the Deputy bares with me. The EU is, of course, bound by international law. This is clearly stated in the treaty. EU member states are similarly bound by international law. In areas where EU member states have pooled their competence, such as external trade, obligations that would normally fall to states are on the EU, including international obligations. However, EU member states are also bound by EU law. When trying to ensure compliance with both EU law and international law, states must first identify the correct legal level at which to act. Certain measures can be taken at the national level while others may only be possible at the EU level. The objective should be to reconcile EU and international law obligations, and that is exactly what we are doing by bringing forward this Bill at a domestic level to ban trade on goods and bring us towards compliance with the ICJ advisory opinion. In parallel, clear advocacy has been going on for quite some time at an EU level to bring about an EU ban on all trade with settlements. For the first time, we saw that issue being discussed during the trade segment of the Foreign Affairs Council. It will be raised again at the Foreign Affairs Council next week. I am very aware my time is running out and there is much more I would say but I might have another chance later. I will state again that we fundamentally believe that these amendments would leave us with a Bill that is unworkable and wide open to legal challenge. Such a move would also act as a disincentive to other EU partners. For those reasons and many others, stated by both me and the Minister on Committee Stage, we are not in a position to accept this grouping of amendments. --- 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