Ireland to ban import of Israeli settlement goods
The legislation, proposed by the government, was attacked by left-wing parties for not going far enough
Ireland looks set to impose a ban on products sourced from the West Bank, after its key parliamentary chamber passed The Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) bill on Tuesday.
The Dail, the lower house of Ireland’s bicameral Oireachtas parliament, approved the legislation, which was drafted by the governing centre-right Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael coalition. While the bill still needs to be approved by the country’s Senate chamber, that is set to be little more than a formality.
The bill itself is of little more than symbolic impact, as the amount of trade from settlements entering Ireland amounted to less than 1 million Euros between 2020 and 2024. Politicians from Left-wing opposition parties, including Sinn Fein and People before Profit, criticised the bill for not going far enough, noting that it only bans goods, but not services.
Alongside Spain, Ireland has become notable as one of the most vehement critics of Israel in recent years; in 2024, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin, due to what it described as “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government”.
The Irish government has stressed that the legislation is intended to ensure Ireland complies with the viewpoint of the International Court of Justice, which in 2024 issued an advisory opinion on the illegal status of Israeli settlements and settlement goods. Israel, which has controlled the West Bank – also known as Judea and Samaria – since the Six Day War in 1967, contests the viewpoint that the settlements are illegitimate.
In late 2025, Spain passed a law banning the import of both products and services from the West Bank, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. Both Ireland and Spain, as EU members, have sought to initiate a review into the economic bloc’s EU-Israel association agreement, but have been stymied by a lack of unified attitudes among EU nations regarding Israel.