I have been a member of the Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade through the scrutiny of this Bill. I think it is the right thing to do, not because it will in itself change the situation on the ground but because Ireland has obligations under international law and we should meet those obligations. Ireland was among the first countries in the world to call for Palestinian statehood. When Ireland formally recognised the State of Palestine in May 2024, it was the product of decades of consistent engagement that has given Ireland credibility on this issue that very few European countries can claim. The Palestinian Authority has acknowledged that and said to us clearly and on many occasions that what it needs from Ireland is not only action at home, but leadership in Brussels. It wants us to use that credibility to bring about a collective European response, because it understands, as we should, that collective European action is where the real impact lies. This Bill responds to the ICJ's advisory opinion of July 2024, which found Israel's continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory to be unlawful under international law and placed an obligation on third states to take steps to prevent trade that sustains that situation. Ireland is taking that step and I welcome it. The committee on which I serve recommended extending this Bill to cover trade in services as well as goods. I supported that recommendation. The ICJ's advisory opinion draws no distinction between goods and services, and there is no moral distinction either, but the legal advice is clear. The 2015 EU basic import regulation provides a public policy exception for goods. There is no equivalent for services under EU law. A Bill that includes services would face a real risk of infringement proceedings without solid legal ground to stand on. I have come to the view that a Bill which takes effect from day one and does what it sets out to do is preferable to a broader Bill that faces the real risk of getting tied up at length in a legal challenge. A measure that never comes into force serves nobody. On scale, settlement goods imported into Ireland amounted to around €200,000 in 2024, mostly fruit and vegetables. The direct economic impact of this measure on Israel is modest. The agreement that would actually economically impact Israel in a way it cannot ignore is the EU-Israel association agreement, which underpins trade worth €42 billion annually. The Commission proposed a partial suspension of that agreement's trade provisions in September 2025, but was blocked by a small number of member states. Were that suspension to be achieved, the economic consequences for Israel would be of a different order entirely to what our Bill delivers. We should pass our Bill nonetheless, because our legal obligations do not depend on the size of the economic impact and because Ireland acting here adds to the pressure on other member states to also act. I raised one matter at the committee that I want to put on the record. The regulatory impact analysis acknowledges that this Bill could prompt a response from third countries, notably the United States, with what it calls a potentially significant adverse impact on Irish economic interests. US companies employ around 250,000 people in this country and anti-boycott laws at federal and state level can result in companies being excluded from procurement contracts where they are seen to be participating in a boycott of Israel. At the committee, I tabled a recommendation which was adopted unanimously, that the Minister develop and publish a range of likely economic scenarios so that the Oireachtas could assess the potential diplomatic and economic consequences for Ireland. The committee's assessment were that those repercussions were, in its word, unknowable. We should pass this Bill and we should do so knowing what might follow.

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