THE DÁIL HAS voted to pass the government’s Occupied Territories Bill, despite fierce criticism from the opposition over the lack of a ban on trade in services.

The long-awaited bill was first proposed by senator Frances Black in 2018 and would ban trade from illegal Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

During today’s debate on the final stages of the long-awaited bill opposition parties brought forward a series of amendments, including a ban on trade in services, none of which passed.

Sinn Féin TD Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said the decision to remove the ban on trade in services is a “political decision”.

“We have an International Court of Justice (ICJ) decision that states very clearly that trade with illegal settlements is illegal, and that includes goods and services,” he said.

The Dáil heard the final stages of the Occupied Territories Bill today. Oireachtas TV Oireachtas TV

People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy said the bill is “being gutted to remove the majority of trade” to prevent damaging relations with US corporations.

“We know that on average 70% of trade is in services rather than goods, and that 70% is now being removed,” he said.

“We have suspended independent foreign policy for the benefit of US multinational corporations and for the fear of offending Donald Trump, that’s what’s happening here.”

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Neale Richmond, said the bill “fully delivers” on the aims set out in the programme of government.

He said members of the business community and multinationals have never brought the legislation up with the government and described the idea that the legislation is at the behest of the US administration as a “conspiracy theory”.

“The government made a decision on foot of the ICJ opinion that there was an opportunity to take the good work done by Senator Black and introduce a piece of legislation that will get us some degree there,” he said.

Amendment 16 was voted against. Oireachtas TV Oireachtas TV

He said the amendments proposed to the bill would leave it “unworkable and wide open to legal challenge”.

Richmond said the ICJ decision does not “distinguish between goods and services”. “It leaves it to the states to determine what steps they should take,” he added.

“Minister McEntee has made it very clear that we are taking a very clear twin track approach,” he said, adding that this includes bringing in domestic legislation banning a trade in goods, while working on an EU level to ban trade in goods and services.

He said the bill reconciles international and EU obligations.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing, bringing forward legislation at a domestic level, banning trade in goods, which is this bill, and bringing us towards compliance with the ICJ advisory agreement, and in parallel, very clear advocacy that’s been going on for quite some time at an EU level to bring about an EU ban”.

Amendment 16, which banned trade in services, was brought forward by Sinn Féin’s Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire and Cathy Bennett, Labour’s Duncan Smith, Social Democrat’s Sinead Gibney, People Before Profit’s Richard Boyd Barrett and The Green Party’s Roderic O’Gorman. The amendment was voted against 79-67.

In a statement, Conor O’Neill, one of the original Bill’s drafters and spokesperson for the civil society campaign to pass the bill, said: “This was an opportunity to take the huge public interest and demand for real action on Palestine and do something ambitious, but the Government has failed to take it.”

“About 70% of Ireland’s external trade is in services. By exempting these flows from the Bill, the Government is implementing a trade ban that deliberately omits the vast majority of Irish trade. It is letting large US multinationals providing tech, IT and other service-based trade to illegal Israeli settlements off the hook.”

“We rightly condemn the settlements as war crimes, but Irish companies will continue to be able to provide them with crucial support.”