Ms Natasha Hausdorff:

These measures in the Bill would necessarily create a Government-required partial boycott of Israel. That would force American companies based in Ireland to violate federal anti-boycott laws. The background to this is that since 1997, with broad bipartisan support, federal law has banned American companies from "comply[ing] with, further[ing], or support[ing] any boycott fostered or imposed by a foreign country against a country which ... is not itself the object of any form of boycott ...". That is from paragraph 484(1) of Title 50 of the United States Code. Those laws apply even to US companies doing business abroad. Of course, there are many large companies doing business in Ireland for tax reasons.

As advised, I shall not name any names, but the issue here is that is that even if one of these companies were to represent to Irish authorities that it was complying with this proposed legislation, it would necessarily fall foul of those boycott provisions and the penalties associated with them, which I have already outlined. That is the severe danger that Ireland is courting in my respectful submission. As far as Ireland's reputation more generally is concerned, the economic consequences of this aside, Ireland is at pains, and positively so, to present itself as a positive place for international companies and American companies to do business. This is not the image that I would suggest that Ireland ought to be putting out to the world. The grave breach of EU law, which I hope we will have the opportunity to analyse in due course because I fundamentally disagree with some of the evidence that has been previously given to this committee in the pre-legislative scrutiny stage, does not paint Ireland well in the international arena if it is unilaterally exercising national policy in flagrant violation of the common commercial policy exclusivity that the European Union enjoys. For those two reasons, and many others that I am sure we will discuss, this will undoubtedly have a damaging effect on Ireland's reputation internationally.