Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to have time to speak on this Bill. The legislation aims to prevent the NTMA from investing in businesses that operate in illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. It requires the NTMA to ensure that no assets from the ISIF are invested in such businesses and, if it becomes aware that the ISIF has invested in such businesses, it must divest these assets from the investment. The purpose of this legislation is to prevent Ireland from being involved in illegal Israeli activities and to end the oppression of the Palestinian people. The objectives of the Bill are to impose certain prohibitions and restrictions on the investment by the National Treasury Management Agency of the assets of the ISIF in undertakings that appear on the UN database of companies operating in the illegal Israeli settlements on Palestinian land. The Bill also requires the NTMA to ensure that such assets are not invested in such undertakings and, where it becomes aware of an undertaking in which such assets have been invested in businesses that are or have been on the UN database, to divest the assets of that fund from such investments. The Bill provides for related matters as well.

I have been thinking about what has been going on in Israel and Palestine for a long time. As a young man, I had great admiration for what the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, PLO, was doing. I am now, quite frankly, having second thoughts on this issue. I have listened to both sides of the argument. We must listen to both sides of the argument if we hope to get anywhere. While I condemn and abhor the murder of children and the slaughter of human beings by Israeli attacks, there is also the constant digging of tunnels underneath and launching of rockets overhead to provoke the Israelis. Two wrongs do not make a right. We saw how long the Troubles in the North lasted, from 1969 to the peace process. We should perhaps look at this example and try to use it as a neutral country. I refer to when we were a neutral country and had credibility right through from the foundations of the State up until recently.

We are no longer neutral now, however, because we have decided to be wholly involved on one side in the war in Ukraine. Most of the political parties here, indeed, all of them I think, are backing what is going on there to the detriment of the other side. I am no fan of Russia but if we are neutral, we are neutral. We played our role in the League of Nations, United Nations and elsewhere as peacekeepers and have done so. I want to stop any funds from being invested by our NTMA, or whatever, or from businesspeople in this regard, but I do not want the doublespeak that goes on here all the time regarding us being neutral. The Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, when he was Taoiseach, told us our neutrality was outdated and we must look at it again. We are also told that we are sending overcoats, helmets and minesweeping equipment to Ukraine. It is as if we had a navy here that would let us do something. We had respect as a neutral country but much of this has been sadly diminished by our involvement in this regard. We have turned a blind eye, a súil dúnta, to different wars in Iraq, Syria and different parts of the Middle East and everything else. There was not a sound out of us. We have become selective in whom we condemn, where that condemnation should fall and what we should say or do on that issue. We are, therefore, very mixed up here, with a kind of liquorice allsorts of neutrality.

As I said, I abhor violence. I was a fan of the late Fr. Alex Reid, Dr. Martin Mansergh and the former Taoiseach, Mr. Bertie Ahern, and many others who brought about the peace process in the North. We have a lot to offer in this regard, but not while we keep undermining our neutrality by being one-sided in the Ukraine war and by not condemning the United States for any directions, or NATO for that matter. We saw what happened in Syria and Afghanistan and the mess they made there. We must, therefore, undertake a lot of soul-searching and thinking here as we go forward. This Bill may not be as simple as it looks.

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