Results 1-20 of 41 for israel segment:8878233

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...Between the two of us, we are happy, on behalf of the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, to assist as best we can the members' deliberations on the pre-Committee Stage scrutiny of the Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill. The Bill is a Private Members' Bill that relates to the work of the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and the Irish Strategic Investment...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: I thank Mr. Downes for the presentation. I will deal with this in two sections. First, I will look at the EU-Israel association agreement, to which Mr. Downes referred. He mentioned that there was a request for a suspension of the agreement. It is explicitly clear that Article 2 of the agreement has conditionalities or requirements around respect for human rights and democratic...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: Okay. Mr. Downes mentioned that trade is an EU competency. When the occupied territories Bill was brought forward previously, we were told the EU-Israel association agreement was one reason it could not be progressed. Mr. Downes in his opening statement, however, was explicit that occupied territories are not reflected and are not, in fact, subject to the EU-Israel association agreement....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Alice-Mary Higgins: ...will be able to pick up on the answers if I am not able to. As mentioned in the opening statement, electronic components are one of the main trading sectors. We know that Ireland’s export to Israel of dual-use components that have a potential military purpose grew sevenfold last year from €11 million to €70 million. In that context, has the Department carried out a...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...to be as helpful and efficient as we can in dealing with the important questions raised. Dealing with them in order, the Senator asked why a review was requested rather than a suspension of the EU-Israel association agreement. As a precursor to that, the decision from the Taoiseach to request, along with the Spanish Prime Minister, was a political decision by an Taoiseach and his...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...territories and then there are the illegal settlements, which are perhaps a different category again within the occupied territories. However, so far as trade as concerned - other than with Israel but with other parts of that region in the occupied territories governed by the standard WTO regime - it is our understanding that it would be a matter for the EU to take measures relating to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...with responsibility for export controls, including controls on defence-related exports, military goods and exports of dual-use goods. To be clear, there are no exports of any military goods to Israel. Dual-use goods are goods that are capable of both civilian and military use.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...closely with colleagues. We do not have any reason to fear the fairly standard software and hardware that is going out. Ireland is a base for software and hardware exports internationally and Israel is one of those destinations. I will reinforce that the end use of what it is intended for is subject to safeguards and guarantees. That is what gives us the confidence to proceed with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...companies. The companies are also directly expected to provide the IDA with relevant background information in terms of their location and ownership structures. To date, the IDA's activities in Israel have been focused on major urban areas and clusters of industrial activity. The seven or eight companies Israeli-owned companies that are operating in Ireland as IDA client companies are...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Matt Carthy: For a bizarre reason we have never fully got to the bottom of, IDA Ireland engaged in a tender process for an Israel-based business development consultant as recently as last October. That process was finally abandoned. To allay concerns that were legitimately raised about that process, we received an assurance in the Dáil that the IDA would not target any Israeli company included in...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Mr. Ronnie Downes: In 2004, the EU and Israel reached a technical arrangement that required Israeli exporters to specify the postal code of the place of origin or manufacture of products exported into the Single Market. Turning to what I said in reply to Senator Higgins, there is no import ban or sanctions per se on products coming from occupied territories, but the labelling requirement...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Matt Carthy: The difficulty is that the labelling is the assurance that products that may emanate from Israel and which are available in the Irish market do not actually originate from, or are not associated with, the illegal settlements. Is it not the truth that there is actually no way for consumers in Ireland to know if a product they are purchasing from Israel actually originates from an illegal...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Mr. Ronnie Downes: The Deputy must be fair. The European Union law applies to all goods coming into the European Single Market. It states that if a product is coming from Israel it can be labelled "made in Israel". If it is coming from the occupied territories it has to have one of a number of labels: if it is from an Israeli settlement it must say "Israeli settlement Golan Heights" or...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Matt Carthy: My own position is that the easiest thing for any consumer or any entity to do, in order to be 100% sure, is to just not purchase anything that has a "made in Israel" mark or bar code on it. What about the other way we discussed about dual-use products? How do we ensure that the products we are allowing to be exported from Ireland to Israel do not subsequently end up in the illegal...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Matt Carthy: ...humanitarian law. On the basis that a number of applications to the tune of more than €70 million were approved last year, am I to take it that it was the Department's assertion that Israel is in compliance with international humanitarian law?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Matt Carthy: I am talking specifically in terms of trade with Israel.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Mr. Ronnie Downes: Has it raised an issue? I know that in 2023, there were a number of refusals of licences. I am not talking specifically about Israel now but in general, in the overall scheme of things, there have been a number of refusals, so it is-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

...diligence and having regard to the UN list. It is not one or the other. All of those issues feed into the decision-making. The reality is that the IDA is not operating the pathfinder arrangement in Israel today and is not active in seeking investment from Israel.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Mr. Ronnie Downes: I have a figure for the total number of authorisations for export to Israel, which amount to approximately €71 million in value, but as to the percentage the Deputy is seeking-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Illegal Israeli Settlements Divestment Bill 2023: Discussion (Resumed) (10 Apr 2024)

Mr. Ronnie Downes: We cannot say for certain that we have any goods that come from the occupied territories. We do know there is a very small volume of trade. I gave the figures for Israel as a whole, which was €13 billion, and the figures in the low millions of euro for any trade in respect of the occupied territories. We do not have the number of goods that are labelled I am afraid.