Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Gorman. I acknowledge that he put a real emphasis on this in the previous Government. It is not simply about strong words, although I do think words matter, and I do think speaking out and speaking up matters. Quite frankly, there are a lot of countries not speaking out and speaking up the way Ireland is. Find me another European country that has referred to the actions of Israel in terms of war crimes. We going to continue - and it is not a case of letter writing - to put pressure to build a coalition because the European Union has to live up to its obligations too. We are not just going to do that, however. We are going to pass a Bill with regard to the occupied Palestinian territories. It is going to have to be legally robust. I had a good dialogue with Senator Black in that regard. There are different legal opinions, let us be truthful, around goods and services and what can and cannot be done, and we are happy to thrash that out. That is what this Parliament is meant to do. It is not a policy difference from my perspective around covering services. It truthfully is not. I get the point about covering services. However, the legal advice available to me is that services are legally a different issue from goods. Let us thrash that detail out, however. I am happy to work through that with the Deputy.

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