I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. Like many others I am really disappointed that the Bill has taken this pathway, first, that it has taken so long to get here, despite the Government's electoral commitment and, second, that it is now watered down. Despite what the Minister said in her speech, everybody on the Opposition benches will agree that it is watered down. I will speak first, as the Minister did, to the existing situation and what is going on and then I will get into the nuts and bolts of the legislation itself a little later on. I am really glad that the Minister used the term "self-determination" because we have lost sight of that, a little bit, at times. We are so focused on the atrocities that Israel is committing, the crimes it is committing and the methods it is using in its ethnic cleansing and expunging of people from the land they are from, that we lose sight of what we are actually trying to work towards here, which is the self-determination of the Palestinian people. I am really heartened to hear that it is, as she said in the top of her speech, something that she is still absolutely focused on. I will also pick up on the two-state solution the Minister mentioned throughout her speech. Although that is obviously the stated goal of the Palestinian authority and most governments, it is rapidly slipping away from us. Israel is building its cities and its occupation on top of Gaza. There will be no opportunity for a two-state solution unless urgency is brought to the global response to Israel. That, for me, is deeply concerning because the people of Palestine are looking on as the supposed tools of international law are completely flouted on a daily basis in their existence but also in our response, as states, globally. They are looking at that response of a two-state solution slip from their grasp and are wondering how they are ever going to have their right to return realised. The phrase that is not in the Minister's speech, which we need to focus on again as international actors, is that right to return. I have heard Palestinian civil society contributions recently on how five generations of refugees will still name their village of origin in the West Bank or in Gaza, even though it is now occupied or under rubble. They will speak of how they cannot go outwards because of the occupation and so they must go upwards. Cities become refugee camps because of the very geographical fragmentation that Israel has imposed on Gaza, the West Bank and now on Lebanon. Some of the research that I have done recently and some of the people I have spoken to in civil society have raised a question for me that I want to throw out today. I have raised this in the last couple of days in various debates. One of the lines from that which frustrates us all is when the Government says it is a leader, that it is doing everything it can, that it is lauded internationally and that the Palestinians thank us for it. I find that last part really hard to take. Of course they are going to thank us for recognising the State of Palestine and for providing aid. Of course they are not going to turn their back on that but I want the Government to delve a little deeper. I want it to go beyond the Palestinian authority. There are parts of civil society in Palestine who will say that the Palestinian authority is an Israeli mechanism. It is there to support a two-state solution but it will oppress leaders who are emerging from civil society right now in Palestine. I urge the Minister to listen to those voices, to listen to the people who are talking about what it is like on the ground and who are seeking that self-determination beyond the two-state solution and that right to return. These are the people we must all listen to now and I urge the Minister to do that. I have also been prompted to cast my mind back to two and half years ago and to think about what those first few months were like for us all when the genocide started or, rather, escalated into the phase that we are now in because obviously this has been going on for decades. I will get to that in a minute but two and half years ago we were discussing things like "Have they really bombed a hospital?", "Was it an accident?" or "Was it intel that was dodgy?" Then we had the propaganda flowing from Israel to say that it had not committed any war crimes and this was all legitimate. Slowly, slowly, our respect for Israel's legitimacy was eroded over that period. It is really important to remember how we got here because now we are at a point where life is so depraved in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon. We have to just think about this for a minute. I was graphic this morning and I am going to get a little graphic again now. Apologies, I am not doing this gratuitously but I want us to remember the agony and the persecution that people are going through. One of the things I am hearing again and again from civil society in Palestine is that the situation for political prisoners is beyond at the moment. It is too much. There are 10,000 people in 20 prisons. Nineteen of those prisons are in Israel so those people cannot be visited by their loved ones. An estimated 50% of those political prisoners have had no trial or charge laid against them. We all know now that the death penalty looms over these people because the Knesset has approved that. In those prisons, torture is routine. We have heard the stories. It is not isolated. It is systemic torture, rape and brutality. Scabies is allowed to flourish in the prisons. The Israelis will not treat it because they do not want to and other diseases are starting to flourish as well. This is what is happening right now, on a daily basis. There are children in these prisons as well. The settler policy is essentially allowing Israel to distance itself from what is happening on the ground. Israel brings in settlers who are violent and extremist people, no question, but that is done on purpose so that the Government can slightly distance itself and say it is the settlers who are doing it. Settlers will take the land of a Palestinian family while they remain in their home right beside it. This family will have to watch as Israeli settlers farm their land, violate them and pour aggression after aggression on to them. That is what is happening and it is allowing Israel, as a State, to distance itself from it. It is insidious. Israel is doing this so that when it annexes the West Bank, it will be an easy process for it. There is no question on the "if". Israel is right there, poised and ready to go for this. That is why remembering the self-determination is so important. I will also talk about how we have got to this point. I urge the Minister to read Francesca Albanese's book, When the World Sleeps, because it gives us such a better understanding of how we have got to this point. This is the last phase of Israel's activities over the last number of decades. Its policies of fragmentation have got us here. Fragmentation is about dividing the geographical land and communities. It is about pulling from one family a child, or an adult, and keeping them detained long enough so that their community is suspicious of them when they are returned. It is about keeping people apart and sowing suspicion and division within families, villages and communities across Gaza. That fragmentation is a written policy. The Israelis want to wipe out the Palestinian people. Public opinion here in Ireland is so clear on this. It is so clear where we need to be and I have said before that this Government has squandered that mandate. This week I remembered that during the 2024 election I canvassed a family. It must have been in September or October of that year. When they answered the door, it was one of the few times that I have actually cried on a doorstep. This family were so upset. They said they were watching the news every night, eating their dinner and crying at the atrocities that were happening. That was two years ago. It was after the ICJ ruling, by the way, that we are only now dealing with. I have no faith that in response to any of this, we have seen the appropriate level of urgency, ambition or leadership from this Government. The thing that stands above everything else as an exemplar of that is the Government's treatment of the occupied territories Bill. I want to use some of my time to dispel some of the myths around the occupied territories Bill that I have heard from the Government in the last few months. When it comes to decisions like the exclusion of services from the Bill, which is a political decision the Government has made, we deserve honesty and transparency on the real motivations that inform its rationale. We cannot and must not have a difference between what we say and what we do. First, services need to be included because of the ICJ ruling. The 2024 July advisory ruling by the ICJ is what the Government cited as freeing it up to pursue the occupied territories Bill. If that is the case, this Bill should be about bringing us into compliance with the ICJ ruling, but this legislation simply just does not achieve that. I remind the Minister, Deputy McEntee, that in the negotiations with Senator Black, in one of the first meetings I had with her, I asked why the Bill was restricted to the occupied territories in Palestine. I asked why we should not broaden it so that all occupied lands across the world have sanctions against them given that we should not be trading with any occupied territories. The answer was that it makes it more compatible with the ICJ ruling, so we will go with that because we know we can secure it. Not only did that ruling give clarity on our obligations, but it clearly called for action on trade with all of the settlements. It noted that all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with the settlements. The Government at the time said it would pass the occupied territories Bill on that basis, yet there is a gap between what it said and what it is now doing. Second, trade law does not discriminate. We know that in international trade law there is no legal distinction between goods and services - trade is trade. We had that confirmed by the committee during pre-legislative scrutiny. We heard from legal experts who, time and again, told us that there is no legal distinction between goods and services when it comes to fulfilling our obligations. The Government's own analysis stated that "the only reasonable reading of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion is that a complete prohibition on trade with Israeli settlements is required". Yet, there is this gap between what the Government says and what it is now doing. Let us take a look at the Government's argument about jobs. Once we have made our way through the double-speak on why services are not included in this Bill, we get closer to the real reason. When we get past the barrier of "It is not possible", we uncover the truth, which is that "We do not want to". The Government has caved in to threats and weasel words from corporate lobbyists whose views and wants are more important than international law, the will of the Irish people and the lives and livelihoods of the people of Palestine who face daily threats, violence and apartheid from the occupation. Letters signed by a handful of members of the US Congress matter more to the Government than the tens of thousands of letters, emails and phone calls from the Irish people who elected us to this Chamber. Another myth is the Government's attempt to say that services do not matter. After the Cabinet met on 26 May, the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, tried to conflate two things. He said that a ban on services was "not implementable" and he tied it to the impact on US multinationals. This tells us that it is not that the Government cannot ban services, as many legal experts showed us it could do during the pre-legislative scrutiny, but that it does not want to. Spain is home to many US multinationals that host Airbnb and booking.com listings of homes stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank. Spain included services in its legislation and now those listings, about 200 of them, are gone. That might not seem like a lot to this Government but it means a whole lot to the Palestinians who have had their homes stolen. Spain did it, so why can we not do it? Despite Spain including bans on services, it has not seen US companies shut up shop. The US is still one of the country's biggest trading partners and these bans on services do not touch its federal and anti-boycott laws. The sky the Government keeps telling us will fall in still seems to be doing just fine over Spain. Spain's courage has shown us that if we fail to include services, it is a political choice in the face of empty threats from business lobbyists, while genocide, apartheid and occupation are happening in front of our eyes. Leadership means including services, shifting the dial and pushing our colleagues to do the same. It does not mean sweet words in this Chamber, promises at election time and excuses that never, ever stand up to scrutiny. We hear vague inferences about economic impact but no figures. We also hear from the Government, when it is trying to minimise the importance of this Bill, that trade with the occupied territories is minimal. The Government cannot say the trade is so little that it does not matter and so large that it will pull down the Irish economy, and expect us to accept that. Finally, let us tackle the largest myth that it is legally not implementable to include services. Legal experts said that it is doable. The Minister does not have to take my word for it. She can take the word of leading global experts such as Professors Panos Koutrakos and Takis Tridimas. She can take the word of BIinne Ní Ghrálaigh or 400 of Ireland's leading lawyers who signed a letter to that effect, or she can take the word of her own Attorney General who said it was a political choice to exclude services. There is a clear public policy exemption under EU law when it comes to trade. If we can rely on it for goods, we can rely on it for services. Pass the occupied territories Bill, and in full.

Sentiment score: 0.02