Middle East
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
============================================================

Helen McEntee (FG), Meath East

On that last point, there is a proposal from the Commission to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement. That was brought about because of the advocacy of Ireland and a number of countries last year. At that time, proposals were also made to impose sanctions on violent settlers and those responsible for the October attacks a number of years ago. What is very clear, unfortunately, and I say "unfortunately" because we fully support the suspension of the association agreement, is that there is not support for that. There is not an ability to progress that particular proposal. I have been advocating, as have a number of member states, for further proposals to be put on the table by the Commission, specifically for the illegal settlements. I have sat around a table with every single member state and we all agree they are illegal settlements. What is happening is illegal. What is happening with violent settlers is appalling. If we are to uphold what we all agree, and what is very clearly set out in international law, then we need to move forward specifically, even if it is only just this and not the whole association agreement, to ban trade with the illegal settlements. I will continue to advocate.
Ireland and Spain are the first countries to introduce legislation. Ours came into effect on 15 September. Through our engagement, we are now seeing Canada, the UK, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and other countries saying that they are going to do this, which is a shift and a change. I really hope that if we continue to pressure and push this, we will see a greater response from Europe as a whole.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01