Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
TÁNAISTE MICHEÁL MARTIN has formally requested that the ‘money message’ be prepared so that the Occupied Territories Bill 2018 can be progressed.
Issuing a money message, in short, removes a block on the proposed legislation and will allow for the bill – which would ban trade between Ireland and entities based on land that has been illegally occupied - to progress through the Oireachtas.
It is unlikely that the law will be passed in the lifetime of this Government.
The Labour Party led calls last week from the opposition this week for TDs to meet during recess this week to vote on the Bill. A special sitting of the Dáil has not been arranged.
In recent days, however, Martin has met with independent Senator Frances Black – the politician who drafted the proposal.
The meeting came after coalition leaders received a legal review of the legislation by the Attorney General.
The Tánaiste, his officials and the Senator discussed what amendments to the bill may look like.
Government has been seriously considering enacting the bill in light of a recent International Court of Justice advisory opinion that stated the settlements in Palestine by Israel were illegal.
A money message is a memo that a Government issues on Private Members’ Bills – pieces of legislation proposed by the opposition – to approve any public spending or tax reform which may come as a result of the new law.
A previous minority Government refused to issue the memo on the Occupied Territories Bill and other pieces of legislation proposed by the opposition benches.
Opposition parties have long claimed that the Government’s decision not to issue a money message on the Bill, which in effect blocked the legislation from ever progressing, reflected the ruling parties’ disregard for the legislation.
Since meeting with Senator Black, Martin has directed his officials to issue the money message so that the bill can proceed to committee stage once it has passed the initial Dáil vote.
The money message will now be sent to the Department of Public Expenditure who will then prepare the relevant documentation for ministers.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
The Bill has been lying dead for the duration of his tenure in government, now as his government is in the process of being dissolved, he has his Damascus moment …
What a charlatan of a politician he is
@John Darker: i’m now imagining him on a dusty road to Damascus in a loin cloth. Thanks for that!
@John Darker: The Netanyahu regime have, for the last year, carried out a heinous crime against humanity. That this bill has still not been passed is an absolute disgrace.
@John Darker: Spot on, pure electioneering.
@Anthony Curran: you shinners would know all about crimes against humanity
Don’t feed the troll.
@Anthony Curran: why are there so many pedos in your cult?
It could be past and enacted tomorrow if you really wanted
@Chris Doherty: *passed
@Chris Doherty: it’s just a PR exercise by Martin, leaving it this long then pretending to want to do it smacks of BS, not many politicians will go against Israel at the end of the day
FF and FG have had 5 years to pass this bill. Not only that, but for the past year Israel has been slaughtering the population of Gaza and bombing it to make it unlivable. A textbook example of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Pass the bill now Tánaiste.
@Anthony Curran: what ethnic cleansing?
@John F doe: do you also ask ‘ what holocaust??
@North Phone Bowe: why do you inbred shinners hate Jews so much. It’s understandable considering SFs link with the Nazi party…
@John F doe: was that meant to be a serious question?
@John F doe: What a sad comment! It says a lot about the kind of person you really are.
Have you not seen the thousands of civilians slaughtered with the help of American money and our own UN soldiers targeted by a genocidal Israeli army?
@John F doe: open your eyes for god’s sake. Don’t be so naive
Why just the occupied territory? Why not just ban imports from Israel altogether.
That would make things a lot easier.
@Kangaroo Kev: Cause the bill is not just about Israel.
@Kangaroo Kev: amd two thirds of the the products into Ireland wouldnt be here
@James Brennan: Are you sure about that.
What a sly, cynical, naked decision to make. Man takes the populace for fools
I assume he thinks that continuing the policy to sit on the Bill, in light of the Irish people’s reaction to Israel’s genocide, might lose votes. Given that he knows there is no chance of enacting the legislation the cynicism is appalling.
@PhiBo: I agree that this has been far too slow, but there is not “no chance of enacting the legislation”. This development progresses the Bill further and it can be enacted under the next government.
So what effect would this bill have on Israel? They have the US behind them so.
@Ned: take a look at the effect of the Dunnes stores workers boycott is South African fruits in 1984.
@The Don: basically yes. They highlighted and drew world attention to that apartheid state which eventually q lead to its ultimate demise. So much so that the S African people recently called for those workers to be recognised by receiving the freedom of Dublin City.
@North Phone Bowe: if two shinners get divorced do they still remain cousins?
@John F doe: what’s your obsession with the “shinners” You come across as a complete 1di©t
Just another dopey politician shilling for Hamas and its goons. Micheal Martin, who has no qualifications in international affairs whatsoever, is showing himself up to be a right tool. This bill is nothing more than a reward to those who committed terrorist attacks against the State of Israel. There is no “occupation” because you can’t occupy land that is rightfully yours. I’m guessing that he has never heard of the San Remo Conference of 1920, in which the League of Nations (United Nations) partitioned the British Mandate into Transjordan (Jordan), which would make up 77% of the territory, and a Jewish State which would make up 23% of the territory, whose name was to be decided by the Jews and whose borders would stretch from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River and would be undivided.
@Frank O’Hara: wow, how long have you been a paid troll by the Israeli government.
Anyone with 1/10 of an IQ can see what is really going on, if Trump gets elected next week you can see Israel taking all the valuable sea front property that is Gaza and slaughter it’s citizens into being forced to leave….
I could go on & on & on.
.
@Mark O’Donohoe: How long have you been paid to be a pro-Hamas bot Mark? Gaza is Israeli land, it always has been. “Palestinians” are a made-up group of people that were created in 1964 by the Soviet Union in order to expand their hegemony in the Middle East. Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB and later Premier of the Soviet Union as well as Ion Pacepa, head of the Securitate (the secret police in Soviet Romania) both admit this. While I’m not endorsing either Trump or Harris officially in the race, if Trump was to come in and start buying up land in Gaza to build real estate, I think that would be an excellent idea. It could be the first step in spreading Western values to Gaza once Israel wins this war.
@Mark O’Donohoe: cool story bro
@Frank O’Hara: Spot the Hasbara shill.
@Frank O’Hara: 1) There is some controversy over the meaning of a people under international law but a clear example is a population that are governed as a group. If Palestinians were not a people before 1967, Israel has clearly now made them a people. 2) If they are part of the Arab people then the West Bank and Gaza need to be handed over to Arab states immediately. 3) If Israel is entitled to Gaza and the West Bank (I say if… gaining territory through conquest is clearly illegal) then all Palestinians are entitled to Israeli citizenship and the vote. There is no other lawful position than one of the three above.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: Spot the pro-Hamas who has no response to factual information.
@N M: No group of people who are not from a country are suddenly entitled to gain citizenship and vote. If the “Palestinians” want such a thing so bad, go to Jordan and Egypt to get citizenship of their actual country of origin. Oh right, those countries don’t let them get citizenship because they want to keep them as “refugees” and perpetual victims. No, Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and Gaza does not need to be “handed” one to any Arab country because the “Palestinians” are not indigenous to it, that’s my point. Also, these “Palestinians” are free to identify however they like, but that doesn’t give them a right to alter or change historical facts and claim land off the basis it. They are a made-up people and there is no proof to show that they existed before 1964.
@Frank O’Hara: Where do you get the idea that Palestinians are not indigenous to the land? There is no evidence for that. Do you believe that all Northern Irish people who identify as British should be sent “home” to Britain or on the other hand that all Northern Irish people who identify as Irish should be sent “home” South of the border? Maybe all Americans who identify as Irish should be sent “home” to Ireland. Palestinians are from Palestine. Their ancestors were living there a century ago, a millennium ago, two millennia ago.
@N M: Palestinians and Jews are very close genetically because they share ancestry. Those are the facts.
@N M: Don’t make me laugh you dope. If “Palestinians” are indigenous, then how come all the pilgrims and travellers that came to the Holy Land wrote in great detail that they met Jews, Circassians, Bedouins, Druze, Christians, but never any “Palestinians?” How come there are no coins, no artefacts, no ruins, no historical documents pointing to the existence of “Palestinians” in the are yet there are thousands for Jews which prove that they were in the land for over 3,500 years? Their “ancestors” were Jordanians and Egyptians, not “Palestinians.” The name “Palestine” as a geographical marker comes from the Romans who named the land after the Kingdom of Judea’s enemy the Philistines, as an insult to the Jews, not from any ethnic group that was living in the land.
@N M: You’re attempted comparison is nonsensical. People up in Northern Ireland don’t commit terrorist attacks against the Republic of Ireland and Irish-Americans don’t commit terrorist attacks against the American government. “Palestinians” are a group of radical Islamic Jihadists who murder Israeli citizens and blow themselves up at any chance they get. 85% of people in Gaza either “supported” or “strongly supported” the October 7th massacre in Israel. Unionists in Northern Ireland don’t think that Ireland doesn’t have a right to exist and they sure as heck don’t say that they want to destroy the Irish State and kill every single Irish person in a second Holocaust because they see them as inferior.
@Frank O’Hara: The fact that there was no people a thiusand years ago who called themselves Palestinians irrelevant. A hundred years ago there was no Kenyan people, no Nigerian people. These identities were forced on the peoples by the colonists. But that does not change the facts that are verified by genetics: Jews are largely descended from the ancient Israelites who lived in the region two thousand years ago. And so are Palestinians. Apart from that what kind of morality says that you can violently kick somebody out of their house based on some spurious historical facts?
@N M: Actually to be blunt, if you want to put it that way, yes. Settlements are just Israeli people returning to the areas that they were ethnically cleansed from in 1948 by the Jordanian army when they expelled every single Jewish person from the area and destroyed their communities. Funny how you sidestepped the fact that there were Jews, Circassians, Bedouins, Druze in the Holy Land that were documented and written about extensively over 200 years ago, but no “Palestinians.” Once again your point is illogical. “Palestinians” claim that they are an ethnic group so therefore, they have a right to land that was never theirs. There are different tribal and ethnic groups in Nigeria and Kenya, since you brought them up, which have existed and have been documented for hundreds of years.
@N M: You can cry “colonialism” all you want, but the fact is that your side of the argument explicitly claim that “Palestinian” is an ethnic group, but the examples you give of Nigeria and Kenya betray your argument because just like the Jewish people, they have proof of their different ethnic groups existing for hundreds of years. Your claim of Jews and “Palestinians” both sharing the same ethnicity is one of the oldest conspiracy theories in the book which has no merit buddy. Your statement is betrayed by the fact that the Canaanites were never proven to have be absorbed fully into the Israelites, so your common geology link is just junk nonsense from the corners of the Internet.
@Frank O’Hara: My point is not illogical. The ancestry of the people who now call themselves (and out of simple good manners I do the same) are clearly descended primarily from the Ancient Israelites. The is simple scientific fact. So they are indigenous. Individual Palestinians are indigenous whatever you decide to call them or whether you refer to them as a people or not. Your argument is based on a fallacy that identities are somehow set in stone and separate from each other. Read the scientific evidence. Where do you think they came from?
@N M: Well, I guess I proud to display bad manners to these “Palestinians” because I do not believe that they are indigenous or that they are even a real ethnic group of people. It’s pretty simple. Like I said earlier, they are a mix of Jordanian and Egyptians who think that creating a false identity entitles you to take land that was never yours. There is no historical documents or any sort of proof whatsoever that shows any evidence that there was such a thing as a “Palestinian” before 1964 and as I said, the top 15 “Palestinian” surnames are of Jordanian and Egyptian origin because that’s who they are.
Israel is a beacon of light in that area, thankfully they have nukes
@John F doe: Beacon of shite *
@Mr Sparkle: only democracy in the region, that tells you all you need to know about that hell hole. Thankfully Israel’s has the means to wipe them off the map if needs be :)
@John F doe: Lebanon is a democracy that allows all sectors of its society to vote and be represented in government. Israel is not a democracy. While 10 million people are citizens, around 5.5 million people are effectively controlled by the IDF but have no right to citizenship or the vote. That is apartheid.
@John F doe: Apartheid isn’t democracy
And let’s see what happens
this is full hypocrisy!
gaza is gone. everybody knows and they still did nothing about it.
if you want a strong message, revoke their embassy and suppress any deal with any company having shares with Israel. that’s for a start.
I hope the electorate puts snivelling Me’Hole out of a job soon!
Simple solution for any of my fellow Irish citizens moaning about Israel: drop over to any of your pals in the region: Hamas, Hezbollah, Houti’s etc and see how long you last – probably less than 5 minutes before you’d be slaughtered for being an infidel. You’d suddenly appreciate the benefits of living in a democracy – you know – countries like Ireland or Israel
@Mark Eightfourone: Now now Mark stop talking sense it’s not righteous and cool.
@Mark Eightfourone: so the illegal Jews in the West Bank are allowed to vote in Israeli elections? Why aren’t the Muslims there allowed to considering Israel claims all of area?
Absolute charlatan.
The British created that mess, let them sort it out, not our problem.
@Dan Murphy: Crimes Against Humanity are all our concern.
@Dan Murphy: but it is. It’s humanity’s problem.
The British have a lot to answer for.
@Dan Murphy: if only that was true. It becomes all our problem.
Wording is wrong. ‘Occupied territories’ ?
Where would it end ?
@offside again: Muslim armies conquered this land and could be classified as occupiers. Can Muslims not live together with others. ?
Mealy mouthed flip flopping jue ‘disliker’ T.D., meets mealy mouthed ‘uisce beatha’ addicted jue ‘disliker’ senator, to target the Jue’s, and no one else.
This is Ireland, as run by the “nice” supporters of ‘alan ak barsewipe’
@Ed Brennan: I’d say you’re jue a trip to the hospital
If this occupied territories bill goes ahead then are they going to ask the colonists who settled in the land now known as America to leave immediately and give it back to the indigenous people or Canada or Greenland or Australia or Scotland or Wales and the list goes on.
Such a ill thought out bill with far reaching catastrophic circumstances
@Andy Preneur: Unfathomable consequences
@Andy Preneur: Strange that the reality that more than three times more of Palestine, Jordan, has already been given to the Muslims Palestinians than to the Jewish Palestinians, Israel.
@thomas molloy: oh it was given, was it? And who did the giving, Eli?
@thomas molloy: Given? Really? No mate. Stolen and cleansed of Arabs.
Completely pointless bill that will do absolutely nothing.
@Trump24: 3 words. Sand, head and bury.
This will be enacted when SF is in office. 15,000 children have been slaughtered by the IDF. We shouldn’t be importing a single orange with Israel. It is led by a fascist government guilty of crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. No matter what you think about Hamas and its vile operations, the planned and deliberate suffering inflicted civilians and infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank is up there with the great genocides of the past 200 years.
have your say