Sinéad Gibney
Dublin Rathdown · Social Democrats · Ireland
“Unfortunately, those are still not entirely clear. Although the Windsor Framework did look to enshrine that policy of no diminution of rights and the non-divergence of rights on either side of the Border, that has not been clear in how it is going to play out.”
“I want to raise one specific sector. Within my portfolio, the culture sector is a good example of where we could see a much better offering in the joining together of the two economic activities. For example, we have a very vibrant production sector for film and television.”
“The other word that is important to bring into any economic discussion and fiscal discussion around a united Ireland is "holistic" because, unfortunately at times, I see the Government looking at the economy as a discrete part of society and neglecting things that fall outside of economic discussion, economic imperatives, and policymaking…”
“There are ways that we can see how our governance of this jurisdiction can be improved simply by the opportunities that will be presented by opening up constitutional change and the discussions that we are all going to have about how we govern ourselves right now and how we may govern an entire island of Ireland.”
“When the Minister of State referred to office roles in Brussels, was he describing roles in NATO headquarters? The international forces the Minister of State is describing are exactly like the coalition that invaded Iraq.”
“I look forward to coming back to the topic of the triple lock in a few questions' time. I have read with extreme concern the reports over the past week on the lack of support provided by the Department of Defence to Women of Honour, whose members are participating in the Defence Forces tribunal.”
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“I am sure many of here will remember his work, The Claddagh Embrace , which, in the run-up to the marriage equality debate, really helped to prompt public discourse and dialogue about how we were all feeling about that debate, and also for us to see a visual representation of gay men. It was beautiful and really well received, and it is something I think we all remember. Joe is an incredibly well-respected, internationally-reputed artist. It was unfortunate for me to hear his experience. He was commissioned to do this work last year and we are at the point where it is about to be unveiled in the coming days. Unfortunately, what he came across as a street artist was a framework, when he was engaging with Dublin City Council, which was totally opaque and which did not nurture that street art as a genre or the community he represents.”
“It is also important for us, as legislators, to acknowledge and recognise the ways in which we can fix this and the things we can do to make progress. I will tell a short story to illustrate three things, namely, the pride we are celebrating, the ways in which discrimination happens and what we can do to fix it. I was contacted by Joe Caslin, who is a brilliant mural artist. In the coming days, he will be unveiling a new piece, which has a trans theme and celebrates our trans community. Joe's work is hugely celebrated; it is beautiful, thought provoking and prompting.”
“I wish a happy Pride to everybody, particularly those in the Gallery who are visiting today. I welcome everybody to the House. This month is a celebration of our queer community. I want to give a shout-out to my daughter Bella, one of my favourite members of the queer community, and maybe I can also mention Anna Nolan, one of my other favourite lesbians who is in the Gallery today. Pride is also about its origins, which was about calling out the systemic ways in which the LGBT community are marginalised. We have to do that here in Ireland and recognise the ways in which we are failing those among us who are LGBT. My colleague Deputy Rice has just given a tour de force on how exactly that is happening.”
“He said, "The level of commitment shown by this Government to affected homeowners is clearly shown by our actions over the past few years." It just does not ring true compared with every contribution that we are hearing here today. The countermotion the Government has put forward needs to be withdrawn. The Government needs to support this motion. It is a detailed, technical motion, put forward by an expert and the community he represents, who are experts in their own lives and their own situations. We need 100% redress.”
“Finally, I want to speak to accountability because lax regulations and a hands-off approach from successive Governments has allowed cowboy developers to wreak havoc in communities across Ireland and essentially sowed the seeds for this scandal. Now, these cowboys are facing no consequences. These are builders who used defective materials, built dangerously, and then walked away, leaving families and children to suffer the consequences of their carelessness and pay for it with their homes. The vast majority are still building. A number of them are getting very high-profile public sector contracts. It seems there are no consequences. There is remediation in this scheme but it is not close to justice. I want to pick up on one line in the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan's statement, before the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, arrived.”
“This brings me to my next point, which is that side-by-side building should be allowed under the scheme. Currently, side-by-side building is not permitted under the defective concrete blocks, DCB, redress scheme. This would have allowed for families to remain on site and not bear the burden of rent or storage costs while works are ongoing. In the last five years, 300 homes have been built, and over 3,000 people currently trying to go through the scheme are stuck in this process. For children with additional needs, the disruption of moving home for the duration of the rebuild has been raised by parents as an issue.”
“We are not only letting them suffer; we are denying them the basic rights of health equality and adequate standards of living. Picking up on one of the points raised by those contributors, there is a dearth right now of alternative housing. This is because there has been stagnant social housing delivery for decades. There are estimates that 12,000 homes in County Donegal will need to be replaced. These people will need to be housed but, as is the case up and down the country, there is nowhere for them to go. There are very few homes to rent and fewer again of these are affordable homes. It is welcome that the scheme will be expanded to those who need it, but the problem of where people will live while works are ongoing will follow this scheme wherever it is available.”
“They told me stories about engineers telling families that their houses needed to be knocked, only for the scheme to only approve partial works. They told me how all these costs have to be paid upfront by families who simply do not have the money, how the communities affected by this crisis are some of the most impoverished in the country, how their houses are literally falling down around them, how the knock-on impact means that children suffer health issues connected to living in unsafe conditions, and that those with disabilities are stuck in crumbling buildings because they cannot get temporary accommodation that is accessible. As has been raised time and time again, the mental stress and strain of this impacts every single aspect of people's lives.”
“There is extreme trauma in these communities and families that will have knock-on effects in these communities for years and generations if adequate supports are not provided to people in tandem with the appropriate and accessible redress schemes. People living in these homes have described their lives as existing and not living. I have had conversations with people living in homes affected by this issue. I have previously mentioned their names here in the Chamber; Ms Marti McElhinney and Dr. Áine Sperrin. They spoke about how frustrating the process of getting redress is, how families are unable to finance a demolition that has been approved, and how they are unable to find somewhere to stay in the meantime, while their towns are dotted with short-term lets.”
“The State cannot allow people to stay in unsafe homes due to an outdated standard applying to assessments. As of April, only 13% of applicants had completed the remediation process, with 87% stuck in administrative limbo. This is where we now see the massive human cost of this scandal. Homes with defective concrete blocks are linked to a severely high prevalence of mental health conditions. Rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, complex post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal ideation were “comparable to those seen in disaster-stricken and displaced populations”, as noted by one researcher in 2025. Researchers from Ulster University called for immediate, targeted mental health interventions for those affected by the issue of defective concrete blocks.”
“It now needs to review these new standards and make recommendations regarding any proposed changes. People will be postponing works while they wait on the outcome of these changes, and these are works which, in some cases, may have been in train for ten years. I also wish to speak about the administrative issues associated with the scheme. Deputy Ward has brought a number of cases to the floor of the Dáil. He has discussed how some constituents of his were assessed and, subsequently, their remediation options were downgraded from full demolitions. If the guiding principle of these assessments is I.S. 465:2018, and this is causing people to have to stay in unsafe homes or is not providing sufficient remediation for the demolition needed, then the standard itself must be re-examined.”
“Key to what we learned from that briefing, and it has come up a number of times already today, is that the County and City Management Association, CCMA, previously estimated at an Oireachtas committee that the number of homes affected by defective concrete blocks stood at 9,500. Members heard yesterday, however, that there could actually be up to 20,000 homes, and that is just the figure for private estate homes. This estimate excludes data from social housing, businesses and community buildings. In relation to the Government’s amendment, it is significant that a new revised standard, I.S. 465:2026, was published on 2 June. This new standard does allow for the testing of foundations, which is a key point of today’s motion and for the campaign to date, but the ball is now very much in the Government’s court.”
“On behalf of the Social Democrats, I am very happy to speak to this issue today. I commend Deputy Charles Ward on the work he has done in bringing this motion to the floor of the Dáil and for his tireless work on this issue. We are very happy to co-sign this motion. I will also mention that my colleague, Deputy Rory Hearne, is unavailable today, which is why I am stepping in. He remains, as we do as a party, 100% committed to 100% redress and to communities, particularly along the west coast, so horrifically impacted by this issue. I also thank Deputy Ward and his team for the new research we were briefed on yesterday.”
“I cannot think of a better description than "head in the sand" for the Government's response to AI and labour displacement. To tell us that labour is going to be augmented and not displaced because of AI is genuinely shocking to me. When I raise AI and labour displacement, this is what I get - we are focusing on reskilling and retraining, jobs are going to improve and we are going to have better jobs. There is no recognition of the massive transformation that is happening in society and there are no efforts to deal with it. If this is the Government's canary in the coalmine and an example of what is happening, and this is its response to what is happening to Covalen workers, then we are doomed because there is so much more of this coming down the track. To pretend that it is just going to make jobs better is so ridiculous.”
“Although these workers have been mobilised, because we have a voluntary system they have found this new understanding of workers’ rights but then they have been faced with the fact that the company does not have to meet them there. One of the workers who emailed me stated, "Currently a majority of impacted staff do not meet the criteria for the statutory redundancy entitlements - it is crucial that the department intervene to demonstrate that AI related job cuts of this magnitude are not allowed to have such disproportionately negative consequences for workers"”
“I have been working with this particular group of Covalen staff since January when the initial threats of redundancies were mooted. Since then, we have seen much larger redundancy numbers hitting this group. It has been an inspiring experience to work with them. They are a newly mobilised part of the workers' sector where tech and data workers are realising how precarious their jobs are right now in the context of artificial intelligence. Rather than going over what has already been discussed in the Chamber, I will pick up from an exchange last week when in response to questions from Deputy Pa Daly, the Minister of State said that Ireland has a strong robust legal framework in place to protect workers experiencing redundancy. I really want to question and interrogate that today.”
“We do not really know the grounds on which the decision is made to deal with jury intimidation by creating an entirely separate system for trying those offences. I need to see from this Government the research, the data and the consultation. Consultation was supposed to follow from the Peart review but this Government has not even dealt with the Hederman review, which was in the early 2000s. There is so much work that needs to be done to ensure we do not find ourselves year after year up on our feet talking about the lack of balance between human rights and what is absolutely and rightly preventing gangland crime.”
“This for me is one of the huge issues, but besides that I believe the principle of presumption of innocence is undermined by the continuation of this parallel system. Even if we park all of the principles around it, one of the biggest issues is the actual practical development. As long as we hive off the issue of jury intimidation and remove juries from certain courts so that we do not have to deal with jury intimidation from what we anticipate would happen, and rightly so, we will never actually deal with jury intimidation in our main courts. That is something this Government has to deal with. The Government has to lock horns with it and tackle it. There are a lot of ways in which juries need support in the existing system, never mind getting into intimidation, but right now we cannot get the data around it.”
“It is sad that we find ourselves once again standing up and making statements about the Special Criminal Court without any of the issues that it raises having been advanced by this Government. My colleague, Deputy Gary Gannon, has just mentioned the Peart review. As a party, many of our positions would align more closely with the minority report of the Peart review. Essentially, what we have here is a parallel system within our criminal justice system where people can, technically, be tried for the same crime in different courts that have vastly different conviction rates, one of which is not a jury court. If we want to experience equality before the law, one of the principles we should be upholding is that it is absolutely reasonable for people to expect to be tried by a jury of their peers.”
“That cautionary tale told about Ireland is one where we are failing to displace fossil fuels as a source of energy because all of our new renewable energy is being eaten up by an ever-hungrier network of data centres. If we do not drastically change course, it will cost us and our children their future. We need a moratorium on data centre expansion. We cannot continue to expand our energy use and think there will be no consequences. We do not have a planet B.”
“The dogs on the street know that 870,000 is not a credible figure of jobs attributable to data centres despite what that report tried to claim. In doing so, it highlighted the problem we face when it comes to the regulation of big tech for the common good, which is that these decisions are led totally by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment and that our policy on whether tech practices or tech infrastructure are good for society lacks any consideration or nuance beyond "what the industry wants, we must provide". That is not an industrial policy. That is the result of a complete lack of backbone or consideration of what the needs of our industry, communities, infrastructure and economy actually are. We are facing a situation where our energy use is increasing at a time when it should be decreasing.”
“It was put best by Professor Hannah Daly at the Oireachtas Committee on Artificial Intelligence last week when she said that the question is whether unregulated growth of that industry follows logically from the fact we need it and that the rapid and unmitigated growth of data centres has made the United Nations brand Ireland a cautionary tale. How is it actually benefiting the average citizen? I do not see a return on investment on this permissive strategy - not in the form of a just transition, not in the form of communities benefiting and not in terms of jobs. The recent KPMG report commissioned by the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment exposed this when, in trying to get creative with the numbers, it went too far.”
“This is a clear effort to cause confusion and to imply that all data centres are there for positive advancements when we know that the vast majority of these centres have nothing to do with science or social uses but are there for private companies generating slop and profit on the Internet. That is why these "gotcha" arguments of, "Well don't you use email? Don't you use websites?" do not wash because email and web hosting processing demands pale in comparison to the behemoth of generative AI data centres.”
“I congratulate the Minister of State. We need to cut through the AI hype. I talk a lot about artificial intelligence in this Chamber and at committee meetings. It is often about the policy of its use, its governance and so on, but it is absolutely vital that we also look at the infrastructure that props up this technology. Time and again, the conversations around regulation, energy and infrastructure are muddied by a lack of understanding of what AI is and the attempts of AI companies to associate energy-guzzling generative AI, which by and large has little social benefit, with positive AI technology such as weather prediction.”
“We have to turn off the algorithm by default. We are going to spend the next year discussing this ban for under 16s, which is not going to work because it penalises children and raises major privacy concerns, when we know the solution is to turn off toxic algorithms by default and fully for children. That is what we need to do.”
“As I said, they are not working. I am not proposing a ban on algorithms. What I am saying is that algorithms are the way these products are being made addictive. We are all suffering as a result. They are radicalising people, promoting harmful content and polarising our society. We need to turn them off by default, and turn them off entirely for children. There are no unintended consequences in that regard. It would bring us back to the Internet that we used to enjoy, where we were not constantly bombarded with material that is trying to sell us things or keep our eyes locked on a screen. This is more important than ever as AI develops. AI will go further than just keeping our eyes on the screen. It is seeking to make emotional connections with us that would exploit us further and make us more addicted to these products.”
“We are now setting up an AI office within the Department of enterprise, which is just going to add to the complexity of a regulatory framework that is not working. This is not just about children. These algorithms are toxic and problematic for all of us. I will go into detail on how. This is not working as it stands. Users are not to be blamed.”
“It is clear that the current legislation and regulatory framework are not working. The Minister of State talked a lot about the obligations on these platforms to allow users to adjust their settings and basically push back against algorithmic profiling and so on, but it is clear that it is not working. There have been multiple US cases recently where we see that the design of these products themselves promotes addiction, and the secret sauce behind all of them is the algorithm. Whatever the Minister of State is describing in terms of the existing regulatory framework, it is not working. The Data Protection Commission, DPC, essentially failed because if it had properly enforced the GDPR, we would not have had to set up Coimisiún na Meán. It now has a whole suite of European Union regulation to enforce, but it is still failing.”
“Increasingly, large amounts of different groups are recommending that toxic algorithms be turned off by default. Most recently, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media, Communications, Culture and sport, of which I am a member, made such a recommendation in our report. I would like to hear the steps the Department is taking to specifically deal with that measure to turn off algorithms.”
“That is happening this week and we must address it. We will continue to push for the full legislative changes that are required, that were recommended in the O'Shea report, and that will bring Ireland up to the level of care that we know women deserve in reproductive healthcare. I look forward to proposing amendments to this legislation that I know our party will support and I look forward to discussing on Committee Stage how we can proactively support that. As Deputy Rice has pointed out, it would be such a shame to expend all of our political capital addressing one isolated part of what we know is a comprehensive set of legislative gaps and make those women wait. I believe most of us in society connected with those women as part of this dialogue in recent years. We must help them to find the solutions they need.”
“Any concerns about these additional measures, which we know need to be addressed, could have been ironed out on Committee Stage. The Minister of State spoke in her opening comments about an open and respectful debate. That is all we were seeking in providing for comprehensive coverage of the gaps that were identified by Marie O'Shea in a way that we believed would provide a positive legislative roadmap going forward. If we cast our minds back to 2018, we know it was the case that many voters in Ireland were swayed by the stories of women who had experienced fatal foetal abnormalities and how the Irish healthcare system treated them. That experience continues today. Women who welcome the pregnancies and want these children are being forced to travel and to bring back their baby's bodies in the boots of their cars.”
“It is regrettable that this legislation does not cover the comprehensive gaps we know are there. The O'Shea report came of the review mechanism that was built into the 2018 Act. It provided an analysis of the implementation and a clear roadmap for how to address those gaps. Those operational gaps have been filled, as we know, by the Department through the provision across multiple hospitals and all the different ways it can be done without legislation. There have, however, been tumbleweeds in respect of the legislative changes recommended in the report. It is welcome that the Bill is being welcomed by the Government. There are indications that Government representatives will be voting in favour of it. However, I find it hard to stomach that our own legislation was not supported in the same way just a couple of weeks ago.”
“That was not my experience. Many friends of mine have accessed abortion care. On paper, they probably had the types of circumstance that people would not have assumed would prompt them towards termination. The reality is that we, ourselves individually and in consultation with appropriate healthcare providers, know our minds, bodies, health and circumstances, and we know our own family planning. We need to be able to access it. The imposition of a three-day waiting period goes against all of that. By all means, if people wish to self-impose a three-day waiting period, they absolutely should if it makes sense to them. Going back to that determination of choice, we need to speak to and listen to women, and we know that the three-day waiting period, if it is imposed in a mandatory way, is wrong and redundant and simply must go.”
“There are many more ways in which women have been mistreated through the provision of healthcare and this is another example. What we learned from the repeal campaign and the stories of so many women, and, since then, the implementation of the legislation and the provision of abortion care in Ireland, is that women know their own bodies. Women need to be trusted. Twenty-six years ago, I was in the middle of a crisis pregnancy. I was a young woman. I was not in a relationship with my daughter's father. In many ways, people would have expected me to be a prime candidate for an abortion. I remember from the moment I got pregnant that I wanted the baby. We talk a lot about choice. For me, it was compulsion. There was no decision-making. When we think about choice and what women go through, we think that they sit down and tot things up.”
“I also welcome the Bill and thank Sinn Féin for its work in bringing it to the Dáil floor. Repeal is deeply a part of who we are as a party. There are many members and, indeed, elected representatives within our party who were politically mobilised and activated by their experience in repeal and who feel passionately about the full implementation of the repeal movement and what it means for women and reproductive rights in Ireland. I welcome, most importantly, the opportunity to address what is a legislative gap that was identified in the O'Shea report and urgently needs to be addressed. The three-day wait is a hangover of the infantilising, patronising and misogynistic treatment of women that we have seen recur many times in our provision of health services in this country. Symphysiotomy is another example.”
“That has a real isolating effect and means that vital sources of culture, entertainment and community are simply vanishing. With the decline of pubs and clubs, including the closure of The Complex in Dublin, we have seen that the hands-off approach does not work. I am keen to work on this, get clarity for these stakeholders and help them navigate what is a complex system that means they are falling between multiple stools. I would appreciate a commitment from the Minister of State that he will engage to deal with this effectively.”
“The Minister of State rattled off even more agencies, which only adds to the complexity people are navigating. Will he, or the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, commit to meet us so that we can thrash this out a little? We have been working with stakeholders in this space, such as the live events association. The Irish Music Rights Organisation, IMRO, has a big interest in this as well. It is not just about the impact on organisations, however. Our young people have had community supports withdrawn. Movements like Give Us The Night are fighting for the entertainment sector to be preserved as a result of the growing cost of living. Many communities find themselves without places to meet, congregate or have joint experiences.”
“Will the Minister of State work with those other Departments to help people who are trying to navigate this? In many cases, they are dealing with this level of complexity on top of already being underfunded and under-resourced. Often, the teams trying to navigate this work on a voluntary basis. They then end up dealing with additional expense and health and safety issues. Will the Minister of State take responsibility and work with his Cabinet colleagues on this? I ask him and the Department to take a lead on resolving this.”
“It is incredibly helpful that the Minister of State read that response because anyone listening is going to hear how complex this is. It is complex for me when I am trying to find information from parliamentary questions. We keep getting batted around. We cannot identify the right agency with responsibility for this. Once again, will the Minister of State do some work to clarify this? Events are experiencing difficulty because different, inconsistent approaches are being taken depending on the local authority and the style of the event in question, be it a music, sporting or community event. There is simply no definition as to what a live event is. It seems clear to me that the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport is the Department that should have primary responsibility for this.”
“I am following up today on the codes of practice for live events which I raised as a topic with the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, in March. I received correspondence which clearly shows confusion between Departments as to who is responsible for the codes of practice for live events. Will the Department support an effort alongside other Departments to close the governance gap and give organisers clarity?”
“The Government cannot say the trade is so little that it does not matter and so large that it will pull down the Irish economy, and expect us to accept that. Finally, let us tackle the largest myth that it is legally not implementable to include services. Legal experts said that it is doable. The Minister does not have to take my word for it. She can take the word of leading global experts such as Professors Panos Koutrakos and Takis Tridimas. She can take the word of BIinne Ní Ghrálaigh or 400 of Ireland's leading lawyers who signed a letter to that effect, or she can take the word of her own Attorney General who said it was a political choice to exclude services. There is a clear public policy exemption under EU law when it comes to trade. If we can rely on it for goods, we can rely on it for services.”
“The sky the Government keeps telling us will fall in still seems to be doing just fine over Spain. Spain's courage has shown us that if we fail to include services, it is a political choice in the face of empty threats from business lobbyists, while genocide, apartheid and occupation are happening in front of our eyes. Leadership means including services, shifting the dial and pushing our colleagues to do the same. It does not mean sweet words in this Chamber, promises at election time and excuses that never, ever stand up to scrutiny. We hear vague inferences about economic impact but no figures. We also hear from the Government, when it is trying to minimise the importance of this Bill, that trade with the occupied territories is minimal.”
“This tells us that it is not that the Government cannot ban services, as many legal experts showed us it could do during the pre-legislative scrutiny, but that it does not want to. Spain is home to many US multinationals that host Airbnb and booking.com listings of homes stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank. Spain included services in its legislation and now those listings, about 200 of them, are gone. That might not seem like a lot to this Government but it means a whole lot to the Palestinians who have had their homes stolen. Spain did it, so why can we not do it? Despite Spain including bans on services, it has not seen US companies shut up shop. The US is still one of the country's biggest trading partners and these bans on services do not touch its federal and anti-boycott laws.”
“The Government has caved in to threats and weasel words from corporate lobbyists whose views and wants are more important than international law, the will of the Irish people and the lives and livelihoods of the people of Palestine who face daily threats, violence and apartheid from the occupation. Letters signed by a handful of members of the US Congress matter more to the Government than the tens of thousands of letters, emails and phone calls from the Irish people who elected us to this Chamber. Another myth is the Government's attempt to say that services do not matter. After the Cabinet met on 26 May, the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, tried to conflate two things. He said that a ban on services was "not implementable" and he tied it to the impact on US multinationals.”
“The Government's own analysis stated that "the only reasonable reading of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion is that a complete prohibition on trade with Israeli settlements is required". Yet, there is this gap between what the Government says and what it is now doing. Let us take a look at the Government's argument about jobs. Once we have made our way through the double-speak on why services are not included in this Bill, we get closer to the real reason. When we get past the barrier of "It is not possible", we uncover the truth, which is that "We do not want to".”
“Not only did that ruling give clarity on our obligations, but it clearly called for action on trade with all of the settlements. It noted that all states are under an obligation to abstain from entering into economic or trade dealings with the settlements. The Government at the time said it would pass the occupied territories Bill on that basis, yet there is a gap between what it said and what it is now doing. Second, trade law does not discriminate. We know that in international trade law there is no legal distinction between goods and services - trade is trade. We had that confirmed by the committee during pre-legislative scrutiny. We heard from legal experts who, time and again, told us that there is no legal distinction between goods and services when it comes to fulfilling our obligations.”
“The 2024 July advisory ruling by the ICJ is what the Government cited as freeing it up to pursue the occupied territories Bill. If that is the case, this Bill should be about bringing us into compliance with the ICJ ruling, but this legislation simply just does not achieve that. I remind the Minister, Deputy McEntee, that in the negotiations with Senator Black, in one of the first meetings I had with her, I asked why the Bill was restricted to the occupied territories in Palestine. I asked why we should not broaden it so that all occupied lands across the world have sanctions against them given that we should not be trading with any occupied territories. The answer was that it makes it more compatible with the ICJ ruling, so we will go with that because we know we can secure it.”
“I have no faith that in response to any of this, we have seen the appropriate level of urgency, ambition or leadership from this Government. The thing that stands above everything else as an exemplar of that is the Government's treatment of the occupied territories Bill. I want to use some of my time to dispel some of the myths around the occupied territories Bill that I have heard from the Government in the last few months. When it comes to decisions like the exclusion of services from the Bill, which is a political decision the Government has made, we deserve honesty and transparency on the real motivations that inform its rationale. We cannot and must not have a difference between what we say and what we do. First, services need to be included because of the ICJ ruling.”
“That fragmentation is a written policy. The Israelis want to wipe out the Palestinian people. Public opinion here in Ireland is so clear on this. It is so clear where we need to be and I have said before that this Government has squandered that mandate. This week I remembered that during the 2024 election I canvassed a family. It must have been in September or October of that year. When they answered the door, it was one of the few times that I have actually cried on a doorstep. This family were so upset. They said they were watching the news every night, eating their dinner and crying at the atrocities that were happening. That was two years ago. It was after the ICJ ruling, by the way, that we are only now dealing with.”
“Israel is right there, poised and ready to go for this. That is why remembering the self-determination is so important. I will also talk about how we have got to this point. I urge the Minister to read Francesca Albanese's book, When the World Sleeps, because it gives us such a better understanding of how we have got to this point. This is the last phase of Israel's activities over the last number of decades. Its policies of fragmentation have got us here. Fragmentation is about dividing the geographical land and communities. It is about pulling from one family a child, or an adult, and keeping them detained long enough so that their community is suspicious of them when they are returned. It is about keeping people apart and sowing suspicion and division within families, villages and communities across Gaza.”