John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the committee for facilitating this scrutiny of what is really important legislation. With more than 30,000 killed, the people of Gaza are enduring what the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, described as horrifying levels of hunger and suffering. Children are literally dying of starvation. This is a continuation of a sustained Israeli strategy designed to annex Palestinian territories through a process of isolation, fragmentation and dispossession.

It seeks to separate Gaza from the West Bank, with the further fragmentation of Palestinian territories into a series of Bantustans cut off from each other and completely unsustainable. Israel seeks to break down Palestinian communities and societies. The policy of the Irish State is a two-state solution. The single biggest obstacle to the achievement of this is the illegal Israeli settlements. There are currently more than 700,000 illegal Israeli settlers on 144 illegal settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Last month, the Attorney General, Rossa Fanning, stated at the International Court of Justice that Israeli settlers had continued to unlawfully destroy and appropriate property throughout the occupied Palestinian territories and that Israel had a policy of encouraging and facilitating the expansion of settlements. He said this was a clear breach of international law and the Geneva Convention. This reinforces the political position of the Oireachtas, which unanimously adopted a motion in 2021 stating that Israel had breached international law through de facto annexation of Palestinian territories. Yet, Ireland, through the NTMA, is currently investing taxpayers' money in business entities that finance, support and sustain these illegal settlements. The ISIF has directly invested in four Israeli banks deemed essential to the operation of illegal settlements. This has the effect of economically wedding Ireland to the financial infrastructure of the illegal settlements. It is completely and utterly shocking and unacceptable that the Government is fighting attempts to divest from this. Not only does this not make sense, but the State is also supporting illegal activity under international law. Generally speaking, the Irish people are unaware that their hard-earned taxes are being invested in Israeli banks and other enterprises essential to the continued existence of the illegal settlements. I dare say that Irish people would and will be sickened when they hear that their money is being invested in these illegal enterprises. Consequently, the Government has a legal and moral obligation to progress the legislation today as a matter of urgency. Unlike other legislation on Palestine such as the Control of Economic Activity (Occupied Territories) Bill 2018, where the Government has attempted to hide behind EU competency law to halt its progression, this is a sovereign issue for the Dáil. There is nowhere to hide for the Government on this issue.

In November, the Government confirmed that the State had €4.2 million of investments in 11 companies on the United Nations database of business entities operating in the illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Motorola Solutions, one of the companies the State was listed as having invested in, provides material for current use by the Israeli military in its assault on Gaza. In 2016, the UN Human Rights Council adopted resolution 31/36, which clearly provided that the UN database should be updated annually and would allow for the addition and removal of specific companies as the situation altered. Since I introduced this Bill to the Dáil in March 2023, there have been a number of developments in this respect. On 30 June last year, the UN announced an update to the database of business entities involved in activities relating to the occupied Palestinian territories, first published in 2020, which at that point contained 112 business entities. The updated database saw 15 businesses removed as they were either no longer involved in or were in the process of ending their role in the occupied Palestinian territories. Following this, on 11 July 2023, the UN Human Rights Council passed a new resolution calling for the UN Secretary General to provide for the necessary resources to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to allow for an annual presentation of the UN database to the Human Rights Council. This provides clear evidence that the database is a live entity that will update and delete individual business entities as appropriate.

Israel has been emboldened by the international failure to hold it to account for its genocidal actions. We are currently witnessing this in Gaza and the West Bank. It is incumbent on us that we align our stated national policy of condemning the actions of Israel with the financial actions of the State, which currently act to embolden Israeli actions, by divesting of businesses enmeshed in Israel's illegal enterprises.