Tánaiste Micheál Martin has said he will bring a memo to Cabinet on Tuesday outlining a pathway to enable it to enact the Occupied Territories Bill but he warned that the legislation may not be passed during this Dáil term.
Mr Martin said the Government had received legal advice from the Attorney General Rossa Fanning on the Occupied Territories Bill, first proposed in 2018 by Independent Senator Frances Black and which has received cross party support in the Oireachtas.
The bill aims to make it an offence in Ireland to import, attempt to import or assist another person in importing goods made in Israeli settlements, which are considered illegal under international law by the UN and most states, but its progress has stalled over concerns that it breached EU trade law.
“It will take some time to legislate for this in my view because the existing bill is unconstitutional at the moment in terms of its current provisions and there are also issues around other aspects of the bill that would need to be substantially amended,” said Mr Martin
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He also pointed out that the context in which Senator Black first prepared the bill has changed in the wake of the International Court of Justice advisory opinion that Israel is not entitled to sovereignty over any part of Palestinian territory.
The International Court of Justice in its advisory opinion delivered in July also declared that the Palestinian’s people’s right to self-determination is “inalienable”, and Israel’s security concerns cannot override the principle prohibiting the acquisition of territory by force.
“I think the context has changed because of the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion and I think any legislation would situate itself in the context of the ICJ advisory opinion – now the attorney general has provided comprehensive advice on this,” he said.
Mr Martin said the Government would have to take on board a recent case where the European Court of Justice ruled earlier this month that fishing and farming deals struck between the EU and Morocco in 2019 were invalid due to the lack of consent of the people of western Sahara.
“We have to have regard to this case as we navigate a pathway through utilisation of the public interest provision in the trade area to say basically there is an issue of public policy that would enable us to prevent exporting to or importing from the Occupied Territories.
“I’ve been talking to Frances [Black] about this but it’s a difficult challenging path and there’s no point in pretending that it isn’t,” said Mr Martin, adding that he didn’t think it was likely the bill would be passed before the current Dáil is dissolved later this year.
Separately, Mr Martin has ruled out any formal transfer pacts between Fianna Fáil and its Coalition partners, Fine Gael and the Green Party but said he was confident the electorate would transfer between the parties because of their broadly similar centrist approach to running the economy.
Mr Martin said he believed the General Election would be fought on issues such as the cost of living, housing, healthcare, combating crime, and addressing climate change and people would see that the three parties occupied broadly the same ground on these issues.
He said that Fianna Fáil would campaign individually in line with its own identity and priorities, and he expected Fine Gael and the Green Party to do likewise. He said he expected transfers between the three Coalition partners to be “fluid”.
“There won’t be any formal pacts but nonetheless we saw in the local elections evidence of the voters deciding to transfer in accordance with the preferences and priorities around the economic model we have in this country, the pro-enterprise model and the need to protect and advance that,” he said.
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