101. Deputy Catherine Connolly asked the Minister for Finance further to Parliamentary Question No. 60 of 29 May 2025, if the 2024 figure, due mid-year, in respect of the value of all State investment in Israel bonds, is now available; if Ireland, through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, ISIF, has now entirely divested itself of direct holdings of Israel bonds; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [39400/25]

Sentiment score: 0.10

I am following up on an issue I have raised more than once in respect of the State investment through ISIF in Israel war bonds. I ask the Minister to be very specific. I got the figure for 2023 in a written reply. We had to wait for the 2024 figure. What was that figure? What is the figure for 2025? Will the Minister explain why we are investing in war bonds when genocide is taking place?

Sentiment score: -0.11

I am glad ISIF has divested of its investment. I received a written reply to a query, which stated that in 2023, the investment was worth €2.62 million. That was the year Hamas crossed the border and Israel started on this genocide. In 2024, as the genocide continued and worsened, this State invested more money in the bonds. It was not an awful lot more, but there was an increase to €3.62 million. The Minister seemed to be unaware of that when a Sinn Féin motion was debated in the House on how the prospectus works. I specifically mentioned the reply I received that included the figure of €2.62 million. I might have taken up the Minister wrong but I understood from him shaking his head that he did not know or was saying the opposite and that we did not invest. At the time we were discussing the Central Bank, he led me to believe, or did not know, that we were directly investing in war bonds. Not alone did we do that but we increased it in 2024. I would like him to be very specific about his involvement in that decision.

Sentiment score: 0.03

I will use the time the Minister has not used. I accept he has nothing to do with those decisions and that ISIF is an independent body. However, he has an opinion and is a part of a Government that says genocide is taking place. He stood over a situation whereby through either a lack of knowledge or otherwise, he could not tell me how much money was being invested. Suddenly we have the information. When I received the written reply, I was not told the relevant figure for 2024. I am now being told, and welcome the fact, that there has been a divestment. I am asking the Minister straight how he, as a Minister in a Government, can stand over the Government investing in war bonds.

Sentiment score: 0.01

The Secretary General of the UN has told us: What we are witnessing in Gaza is a level of death and destruction that has no parallel in recent times. And it is something that undermines, I would say, undermines the most basic conditions of human dignity for the population of Gaza, independently of the enormous suffering that they are having. We are investing in that genocide.

Sentiment score: -0.50

The Minister's Government plays a role in doublespeak.

Sentiment score: 0.25