Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not dragging my feet. Regardless of our political persuasion or whichever party we are in, or whether the people watching from home support Government parties, Opposition parties or neither, people in this country are sickened, appalled and disgusted by what we are seeing in what Israel has done in Gaza and what the Israeli Government, as the Deputy rightly said, is very openly and blatantly proposing to do in relation to Gaza. That does require all of us to do more and I include Ireland in that.

I do not share the Deputy's view of what Europe has done to date. The European Union, of which Ireland is a part, has provided very significant financial assistance to UNRWA on a multi-annual basis, only agreed a couple of weeks ago at the first EU-Palestinian high level dialogue, to help support the Palestinian Authority. Action is being taken on that but Israel is not listening. Nothing that has happened to date has changed the situation here in terms of Israel actually showing restraint, or issuing statements calling for restraint, when there is a government in Israel that plans doing the exact opposite.

What we are doing here at a national level is continuing to work at EU level. That makes sense. I said this to Senator Black yesterday. If this is about having impact and applying maximum pressure to help bring about a ceasefire, a cessation of violence and a two-state solution, the EU living up to its obligations under the human rights clauses of the association agreement is what has to happen.

I was interested yesterday to see the Netherlands join Ireland's and Spain's call for this to happen. In the hours ahead I intend to speak to counterparts to see if more countries will come on board and echo Ireland's call. The human rights clauses in trade agreements or association agreements are not there for padding. They are not there to make the agreement longer. They are not discretionary extras and they have to count for something. We are all pretty furious that they do not seem to count for something at the moment. We will continue to work at that.

Let me be clear that we are going to take forward legislation on the occupied Palestinian territories. The programme for Government is clear on that. We intend to honour that. I had a very good meeting with Senator Frances Black yesterday. She is a very good person and her motive here is to try to do some good. At that meeting I committed to going to the Government this month to seek a decision to move forward on that. We will have a longer time to discuss the contents of what is in that legislation but I will have to be honest in only being able to put something in the legislation that will stand up to legal scrutiny and that is in compliance with the laws by which we have to operate. There is a benefit of publishing a Government Bill and going to an Oireachtas committee. I will not speak for the Senator but I think she saw the benefit in this too, which is the opportunity to actually tease this out and to bring in people and hear different perspectives, to get the best legislation possible. I hope that in Ireland bringing forward legislation it might encourage and spur other countries to say, "We could do that too". If the EU refuses to act as a collective on this, why do a number of member states not do what we are proposing to do here in Ireland?

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