Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Tánaiste, Deputy Coveney, to the House and thank him for the very effective work that he has been doing in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, notably on Brexit and in Northern Ireland and, hopefully, that will fructify shortly across a range of activities. We appreciate that important work for Ireland and for the values we hold internationally.

I congratulate my colleague, Senator Black, on bringing forward this Private Members' Bill. She is a thoughtful and active Member of the Seanad who is passionate about issues. She made a very sincere, well researched and excellent presentation. She deserves all our credit in bringing about this important debate and putting this matter squarely on our agenda.

I want to make clear that the Government and virtually every Member of this House are opposed to the construction of settlements. They are also strongly opposed to the relentless expansion of those settlements. We abhor the restriction to the freedom of movement of the Palestinian people this involves. We abhor the reduction in income and the effect that has had on the livelihoods of the Palestinian people. We also abhor the restricted access to electricity, water and to power. We abhor the confiscation of Palestinian lands. All that is wrong and morally indefensible. It must stop and it has to be reversed. That is the position of the Irish Government and people. Let there be no ambiguity about that before I progress to discuss the legislation.

The Government has constantly conveyed that concern. There has been no shirking that. It is great the Tánaiste took this issue sufficiently seriously to come to the House to deal with this Bill. On visits to Palestine and Israel in July 2017 and January 2018, the Tánaiste openly and clearly condemned the settlements. On 12 January he condemned the Israeli plans for further settlements in the West Bank. I join in that condemnation, as do colleagues. As a Government and as Irish people, we strongly support a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli question. We support a shared capital in Jerusalem. We support the self-determination of the Palestinian and Israeli people in those situations. We want to use our moral authority, as an independent neutral State with great traditions and with great international traction, within the EU, the Council of Europe where I had the privilege of leading the Irish delegation, and the UN, to continue dealing with this issue.

Despite the worthy intention underpinning Senator Black's Bill and the great research that went into it, I am concerned that, in practice, it may not work out the way she would envisage it. International trade is a EU competence and it cannot be reasonably breached. I understand Senator Black made the point that it can be breached on grounds of public policy but there is a question mark over that and some of the best legal advice to the Government is that this may be a difficult case in a European court situation. There are domestic constitutional issues with the Bill. One would not need to be a very subtle constitutional expert to see how they might arise. It is also valid to say that despite the good intention underpinning the Bill, this unilateral action by Ireland would have little impact on the settlements. They are essentially dormitory settlements from which people commute. While we say they are wrong the economic impact of Irish sanctions would not be enormous.

It is difficult to implement the nuts and bolts of this legislation because many goods from the settlements come into Ireland from other EU countries. They make their way from the settlements, in so far as there is a volume of goods, into other EU countries and come into Ireland that way. They are multinational sourced goods and there is not a concept of the different policies of individual countries and how to administer that. Therefore, that would be an implementation difficulty.

Many people believe this proposal would compromise and negatively impact the moral independent authority of the Tánaiste and Government in dealing with the Palestinian-Israeli issue. Were we to go down this road, however understandable in the context of the wrongness of the settlements and all that goes with them and I did not mention the harassment of people in a security sense, it would put us clearly into one camp and remove our objectivity and in a sense our capacity to be a force for peace and for a settlement. That is an important point.

We are competently addressing this question in the context of the Council of Europe and only last week, one of our delegation, Deputy Crowe, made an excellent contribution to the plenary assembly of the Council of Europe stating the Irish view that there should be a two-state solution. Moreover, on behalf of the delegation, he actively questioned and spoke about the wrongness of the settlements.

In essence, we are opposed to the settlements and support a two-state solution. I understand the sentiments behind the Bill and share the concerns but am not confident that the Bill can be implemented in practice. I honestly believe it may be the strategically wrong thing to do in terms of ultimately getting a solution to this awful problem.