Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal East, Labour)

I thank Deputies Boyd Barrett and Murphy and their colleagues for bringing this motion to the House today, which we are happy to support in a cross-party manner.

With all due respect to the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, I am absolutely disgusted, for want of a better word, that the Minister is not here on her first full day, at least even for the start of the debate. Along with Ukraine, this is the only show in town from a foreign affairs point of view. This issue is the only issue that has had pre-legislative scrutiny through the foreign affairs committee, on which I am privileged enough to sit. This committee agreed that it:

strongly recommend[ed] progressing the Bill and that the prohibition of imports from the Palestinian Occupied Territories should be extended to include trade in services, in line with the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and the Resolution which Ireland co-sponsored at the United Nations General Assembly.

It was not just Opposition members of that committee who agreed this. Other ordinary Members of this House came in and contributed. Deputy Gibney came in and contributed a number of times in the pre-legislative scrutiny, as did members of the proposing groups. Members of Government on that committee agreed with the unanimous decision that services should be included. That was in the warm months of summer. We are now in the cold weeks of November. The previous Minister for foreign affairs, the Tánaiste, Deputy Harris, who in that seat during the Global Sumud Flotilla debate, committed to having the next Stage of the occupied territories Bill in this Chamber before the end of November. It is on the Dáil record. He said the end of November. It is 19 November now. Those on the business committee get indicative business for the rest of the month - Deputy Boyd Barrett will attest to this - and there is no sign of it. Another promise has been broken.

We are a year on from the election, when the Government went door to door and said that the Bill was a priority and would be passed. What has changed? First, the Government won the election so it does not have to live up to its promises. Second, we have seen an increase in pressure from mainly American lawmakers. We know the Taoiseach received a letter from Washington from 23 lawmakers and we have seen Lindsey Graham threaten Ireland consistently. Why are we marching to their tune? These 24 lawmakers comprise 5% of all of Congress. To put it in perspective, it is less than the proportion of Government support in this House coming from the Lowry group. These lawmakers from America seem to have a disproportionate impact on this issue, compared with that group. We interrogated the threats to the Irish economy through the pre-legislative scrutiny. We asked IBEC if anyone had come to it to say they were going to pull out of Ireland or were not going to increase jobs in Ireland. It could not answer. We did not just take IBEC's word for it. We had the American Chamber of Commerce in before the committee not two weeks ago. We asked the same question. We asked if any company had come to the American Chamber of Commerce and said it was going to pull out of Ireland. The answer was "No". We asked if any company had said it would not grow in Ireland. The answer was "No". All it could refer to was this mythical, vague "reputational damage".

Ireland's reputation is being increased and improved by the fact that we in opposition, starting with Senator Frances Black all those years ago, are pushing this Bill. The Government, for a moment, had a chance to continue to push that reputation and improve it. It is sacrificing that now on foot of fear and pressure from the United States. It is absolutely disgraceful. The Government says it is a Government of delivery. It should prove it. It should deliver this Bill. The Bill has already gone through pre-legislative scrutiny. We have done that work months ago. We have done our part; we are asking the Government to follow through. We believe this Bill will not be in before Christmas. If that happens, it will be 100% down to the Government. If the new Minister for foreign affairs is starting as she means to go on by not turning up to this debate and by not showing this one issue the respect, interest and import it deserves, it says everything about the Government and how it feels about the Palestinian people and the people of Gaza.

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