Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As was said, Ireland has seen a significant and welcome increase in corporate taxation receipts over recent years and, of course, it is right this House considers the most impactful way in which those receipts can be utilised to the benefit of the people. As Deputy Doherty said, given the potential windfall nature of the income received, we need to be considered and careful as to how it is put to use. Sinn Féin has been very clear that it would be ill-advised to use this for recurring day-to-day expenditure. However, we also recognise that the worsening housing crisis and acute infrastructure deficit are two areas where investment could be prudently made to address real crises in Irish society that would otherwise go unabated and that are worsening under this Government. The establishment of a sovereign wealth fund would make good use of this funding, but rather than marry these two worthy endeavours, the Government has instead chosen to miss the mark by failing to give explicit or sufficient regard to how the investment could positively impact those deficiencies and crises that are here today within the State. It is for this reason that Sinn Féin will not be supporting the Bill.

I want to focus in particular on the environmental, social and governance concerns relating to this Bill. As of this week, the Irish State has invested €4.2 million of taxpayers’ money in companies that derive profit from their activities in the illegal Israeli settlements of Palestine. These are companies that facilitate the Israeli Government’s war machine and activities this House has described as annexation. The Minister will be aware that Sinn Féin Deputy John Brady brought forward very important and simple legislation that would force the Government to act in respect of this disgraceful complicity of companies that are profiting from war crimes. It would force the Government to divest and ensure Irish taxpayers’ money was not being used for those purposes. Of course, unfortunately, the response of the Government to date has been to defer, delay, frustrate and drag its heels in progressing that Bill. There is no meaningful rationale for this. First, the Government had the excuse that the UN database could not be updated but then the UN database was updated. The most illogical argument the Government presented was that it cannot act on the basis of this database because there might be other companies that are in breach of international law. Then, this week alone, we saw that the Government is itself divesting from some companies that are on the database but not others. All of this points to the absolute need for a legislative basis to divest and prohibit future investment in any company that is profiting from the illegal actions of the Israeli state.

In November, I asked the Minister about the Bill and he acknowledged in principle its merits. However, he indicated he was exploring other approaches than Deputy Brady's Bill. Knowing that the Bill that is before us today was coming down the line, I had probably naively expected this would be the opportunity the Government would take to utilise the environmental, social and governance framework of Ireland's investments to ensure we divested. While I welcome the positive pronouncement that we are going to have a partial divestment from the companies - six companies in particular - that profit, it begs the question why it involves some but not all companies that are on the UN database. It is incumbent on the Minister to explain the basis for divesting from some companies and not others. Is it simply that the Government divested from Israeli companies but not international companies that are on the list? Did it relate to the percentage of a company’s activities within the illegal settlements? Is there a barometer that indicates there is a certain level of complicity in regard to breaches and international war crimes that is acceptable so that Irish taxpayers’ money can be invested in this way? I contend there is not.

My appeal to the Minister, in the first instance, is to ensure the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill is allowed to proceed through this House as quickly as possible and put very firmly into law, but also that the Minister would support amendments to the Bill before us today. One of the things we can get right is that we ensure that never again is the Irish taxpayer expected to fund and invest in companies that are complicit in the most heinous of international law breaches.

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