Ireland’s attorney general identifies significant legal and practical issues with extending a planned ban on trade with Israeli settlements to cover services, complicating the bill’s progress.
DUBLIN: Ireland’s attorney general has raised significant legal and practical concerns over extending a planned trade ban with Israeli settlements to cover services.
Junior minister Neale Richmond told parliament the detailed advice identifies issues with a single EU member state regulating trade in services with a territory outside the bloc.
“The advice, which is detailed and extensive, identifies a number of significant legal and practical issues with the regulation by a member state of trade in services with a country or territory outside the EU,” Richmond said.
He added that officials have sought further legal clarification to ensure any legislation is robust and can withstand challenge.
The long-awaited legal opinion has been a primary cause of delays for the proposed law, which Dublin first committed to in October 2024.
The bill aims to curb economic activity with settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, facing domestic pressure to include services while Israel and the United States want it scrapped.
Limiting the ban to goods would affect only a handful of products, like fruit, worth about 200,000 euros annually.
Extending it to services could implicate multinational technology and other firms based in Ireland that do business in Israel.
Richmond reiterated that including services would be “considerably more complex” than a goods-only ban.
Ireland has been one of the EU’s most vocal critics of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Other EU states, including Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium, have also moved to ban trade with Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
