SENATOR FRANCES BLACK has said the Palestinian people have “waited too long” for Ireland to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, as she joined with opposition leaders calling for the law to be enacted before Christmas. 

The Independent Senator who proposed the bill (which would ban imports from occupied territories) back in 2018, said today she has lost patience with Tánaiste Simon Harris and the Government.

Black had been working closely with Harris, who is also the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, to enact the bill since he committed to passing it earlier this year. 

She said she was due to meet with him the week of the presidential election, which took place on 24 October, but that this meeting had to be rescheduled, and she has not heard from him since. 

“So I am disappointed that I haven’t heard from him, and I would like to know what their plans are,” she said today on the plinth at Leinster House. 

On Wednesday in the Dáil, People Before Profit (PBP) will use their private members’ time to bring forward a motion calling on the Government to honour the general election pledge made by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and urgently enact the bill. 

Senator Frances Black says she has run out of patience with Tánaiste Simon Harris & the government when it comes to their promise to enact the Occupied Territories Bill.

A key election pledge from FF and FG last year, but progress seems to have halted.

⁦@thejournal_ie⁩ pic.twitter.com/E3NX8DIAdH

— Jane Matthews (@janeematthews) November 17, 2025

The motion is supported by Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats and the Green Party, whose leaders appeared on the plinth today alongside Senator Black and PBP leader Richard Boyd Barrett. 

Boyd Barrett said it is “absolutely shameful” that the Irish government has still failed to impose any sanctions on the Israeli regime for the crimes it is committing against the Palestinian people. 

“Often, the Irish government claimed that they’re the most supportive of the Palestinian cause in Europe. The truth is now Spain, Slovenia, and other countries have jumped ahead and passed similar bills,” he said. 

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald said there is “no plausible excuse for the Government to continue dragging its heels” on this bill. 

She added that in the scheme of things, this is a “modest but necessary response” to the “wholesale slaughter and genocidal actions of the Netanyahu regime”.

Labour leader Ivana Bacik noted the recommendation from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade in the summer that a ban on both goods and services from occupied territories should be included as part of the bill and said there has been “enough foot-dragging”. 

Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns said a lot of promises from last year’s general election have been “completely abandoned, on childcare, on housing, on the Occupied Territories Bill”. 

“When you consider the grave impact on a day-to-day basis of not acting on this one, it’s particularly unforgivable,” she said.

Meanwhile, Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman, who was a minister in the last government, added that the approach from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on this bill has been “deeply cynical”. 

“They have basically gaslit the Irish people for the last year,” he said, noting that both parties indicated their support for the bill ahead of the election, before removing services from the bill “out of nowhere” afterwards.

He also noted that advice from the Attorney General to the last government was clear that there was no reason for services to be omitted from the bill. 

Government position

The Occupied Territories Bill was first introduced by Independent Senator Francis Black in 2018 and proposed making it an offence “for a person to import or sell goods or services originating in an occupied territory or to extract resources from an occupied territory in certain circumstances”.

The slightly amended bill proposed by the Tánaiste, and formally known as the Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill, would make it a crime under the Customs Act 2015 to import goods into Ireland that originate in Israeli settlements built over what is legally recognised as Palestinian land.

However, services such as tourism and IT are as of yet excluded in the latest draft of the legislation.

Harris has said he is open to services being included in the legislation, but speaking in the Dáil recently, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said: “The Attorney General is coming back to us on a number of fronts – one is implementability, by the way. The feedback I am getting is it is not just implementable, but, second, are you putting companies based here in a very difficult position through no fault of their own in respect of how that would be treated in the United States?”