Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 16 July 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade
General Scheme of Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2025: Discussion (Resumed)
2:00 am
Mr. Fergal O'Brien:
We have not seen any proposed legislation regarding what we are talking about on services. Is it imports, exports or all trade? I do not know. We would have to see the draft legislation. The real challenge with services is the complexity of the value chain. We could have one team member in a postcode designated to be covered by this Bill who could be working with 50 or 100 people on a company-wide research and development, or other, project. Their contribution to that work could potentially be impacted by a ban on services. It really depends on what that legislation would be. I suspect that the direct trade in terms of entity to entity and business entity to business entity is also very small. However, it is the complexity of how services are created in that value chain and the issues and challenges we now have with the location of where people live versus the location of where people work that would make this very complicated, as well as the fact that, unlike goods, we do not have a trade designation system or codification to identify the precise location where those services are coming from. It is much more challenging.
No comments