I am pleased to see our colleague, Senator Frances Black, here this evening. It is only right and correct that she is here. I was proud to have been one of the co-signatories of the originally intended occupied territories Bill back in 2018 - the Bill, the Minister will not need reminding, that included services. The addition of services is legally complex but it is also permissible. It is politically difficult for this Government. That is the reality and that is why it is being excluded. My colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, set out in very clear terms the position of my Labour Party colleagues and me. We are of the very clear and unequivocal and unambiguous view, that the legislation produced in 2018 - the legislation we need to see here today - should be reflective of that text and spirit. In fact, the legislation published back in 2018, which passed Second Stage in the Seanad, ought at this stage to be on the Statute Book already. We in the Labour Party did not need Israel's genocide in Gaza, the illegal detention of peace activists by Israel or the actions of fascists like Ben-Gvir a few weeks ago to persuade us that a serious and practical stand needed to be taken against the genocidal regime in Israel. It is never the wrong time to do the right thing. Services should be included. They should be at the heart of this Bill for all of the reasons my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, has outlined. I accept this is a contested space. To me, the debate on where one stands on this issue is not one of legal interpretation. It does not break down on legal lines, it breaks down on political, ideological, moral and ethical lines. To say the least, the debate in the public sphere on this proposition over the last three years has been interesting. I was not born yesterday. I have been around quite a number of years. I have a very keen ear attuned to economic trends and questions of investment in Ireland and jobs. I am a member of the Labour Party. My principal purpose in politics is to ensure that the material conditions of the Irish people are looked after and improved, and that we have meaningful, good, decent, well-paying work with good conditions, but the kind of shape-throwing we have seen by commentators who say they have an insight into the minds of US investors about the impact on Ireland of taking a stand like this, including services in this Bill, is, to say the very least, overdone. As we know, capital has no conscience. Investment will stay here despite all of the protestations to the contrary. We cannot and should not relent on the basis of some form or threatened form of imagined economic blackmail from US politicians or anyone else. Even the war criminal, Netanyahu, is losing the support of Trump and he needs to wake up to that reality. In any case, this is hardly the point. We have a moral and ethical responsibility and a legal and political responsibility to take every conceivable action, to use every lever available to us, as Deputy Smith has said, to oppose, counter and stop genocide. The question here this evening is whether we all, as legislators, public representatives and citizens of this Republic, can truthfully and honestly say we have done that to the best of our ability. We accept that Ireland has taken a leadership role on Palestine internationally. We have done that over the decades but, by God, the bar internationally is disgracefully low. We need to include services in this Bill for it to have a meaningful impact, the kind of impact we all want to see.

Sentiment score: 0.18