Mr. ?amonn Meehan:

I am not the author of the Bill. I will say, however, that it is time to move this Bill to Committee Stage and for amendments to be proposed and discussed. If there are genuine issues around constitutionality and the operability of the legislation as it currently is framed, move on to that Stage and let us see what amendments the Government would propose. As Deputy Brady has said and as happened in the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, is there a way in which this can be done in a cross-party way in order that our policy - in terms of what we say, what we advise our citizens and our position on the settlements - is actually consistent with where our taxpayers' money is invested? From my perspective, and I am purely looking at it from the outside, the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act does not have a list of companies and enterprises attached to it. It states and it instructs the Minister for Finance, the NTMA and the investment fund to identify investments in fossil fuel enterprises and to divest. It is a simple matter it seems to me, although I am not a crafter of legislation or a politician. It does not seem to be a particularly difficult matter to draft legislation that instructs the Minister to identify and divest from enterprises that provide succour to illegal Israeli settlements and provide income to the State of Israel from those illegal settlements and which run counter to the wishes of the Irish people. We conducted a public attitude survey with Ireland Thinks at the end of January and the outcome of that was that 80% of the Irish public believed that Israel was committing a genocide and 71% believed that sanctions should be imposed by Ireland. This is not a sanction; it is a divestment rather than a sanction. I believe that it is possible to find a pathway to legislating. It may well be the first primary legislation to divest from Israeli settlements anywhere in the world but that to me is not a reason why we should not act.