Draft occupied territories Bill not expected to cover banning trade in services, says Frances Black
The Government has indicated it will publish draft legislation before the end of this month, but has indicated its legal advice is against extending this to trade in services and instead focusing on trade in goods.
Ms Black, who first published legislation seeking to curtail trade with the territories in 2018, also said she hopes to be called before the Committee on Foreign Affairs, where she will make the case for the legislation to cover services.
Tánaiste Simon Harris, who will bring the legislation to Cabinet next week, has indicated an openness to considering amendments on trade in services if they are brought forward during the legislative process.
READ MORE
Mr Harris indicated earlier this week that the general scheme – an outline of the legislation – will go to Cabinet next week, which Taoiseach Micheál Martin reiterated at a meeting of his parliamentary party on Wednesday evening.
On Tuesday, the Tánaiste said the Bill 'just needs a little bit of final work from a legal point of view' before going to Cabinet next week.
Once that is published, it will be sent to the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs committee for pre-legislative scrutiny, a process which is expected to take around two to three weeks to complete.
'I don't think there'll be services in the general scheme, and that's where the debate will be in the Foreign Affairs committee, that's my expectation, that it won't be in,' Ms Black told The Irish Times on Wednesday.
She said that her hope was that legal experts whose view is that the inclusion of services is legal will be asked before the committee to give evidence.
[
Government wants to pass Bill banning trade with occupied Palestinian territories 'this summer'
Opens in new window
]
The inclusion of services could potentially mean tech and finance companies which conduct business in the occupied territories. Earlier this week, five separate international legal challenges were launched against Airbnb, the short-term lettings platform, which pro-Palestinian and human rights activists say is currently managing more than 300 holiday lettings in the West Bank.
Elsewhere, Mr Harris told his parliamentary party meeting that the escalation in hostilities between Israel and Iran cannot distract from the situation in Gaza, where he said children are starving and humanitarian aid is not getting through.
Mr Harris also told his TDs and Senators that the return of AIB to full private ownership is a 'milestone moment' and contrasted it with 2011 'when the entire banking sector was destroyed and the IMF were in town following reckless economic mismanagement'.
Mr Martin told the Fianna Fáil meeting that the Government would consider proposals next week arising from the Dublin City Taskforce report, which would include funding for key initiatives including a special-purpose vehicle to partner with site owners to 'transform' the O'Connell Street area.
He also welcomed the expansion of the rent pressure zones (RPZs) agreed by Cabinet last week and the granting of additional powers to the Land Development Agency, which got Government approval this week.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Independent
16 minutes ago
- Irish Independent
Security fears behind Elon Musk's controversial ultimatum to staff, senior X executive says
Lauren Wegman, a senior HR director, said the message was an attempt to give Twitter workers an opportunity to resign with severance, if that was what they wanted to do. She said her understanding is that Mr Musk was reading negative comments on Twitter and internal messaging platform, Slack, and came up with the email. Ms Wegman said managers needed to move fast, as employees had access to data centres, algorithms and financial information. She claimed some individuals were openly saying that they wished to harm the company. The HR executive also accepted there could have been more clarity for workers in documents that explained Mr Musk's email, and information regarding benefits was 'not ideal'. Ms Wegman, who is based near Atlanta in Georgia, was giving evidence during an appeal by X of a record award of €550,131 to former Dublin-based executive Gary Rooney. Last year, adjudication officer Michael MacNamee found that Twitter unfairly dismissed Mr Rooney. The former Twitter employee did not respond to the tech billionaire's email in November 2022. In his email, Mr Musk asked workers to click a link to make a choice between an 'extremely hardcore' future under his leadership or resign with severance pay. Twitter was rebranded to X in July 2023 after Mr Musk's takeover of the social media platform. During cross-examination, Padraic Lyons SC, for Mr Rooney, asked Ms Wegman if Mr Musk was asked to come along to give evidence at the Labour Court. ADVERTISEMENT Ms Wegman said she did not know if he was asked to be there. Mr Lyons put it to her that Mr Rooney had no way of knowing under Twitter 2.0 whether 'hardcore' meant working through weekends. Ms Wegman said her personal 'take' on this was that she was already doing it. He said Mr Rooney had no way of knowing what his benefits would entail and asked if he was supposed to ferret out this information before a tight deadline. Mr Lyons said HR should have explained what it meant to make the remotest attempt to be reasonable towards its employees. Ms Wegman said that in November 2022 it was 'all hands on deck', and they had all jumped in to do what we could to 'keep the ship afloat'. She said she would not describe it as a bad time, but a difficult time. Mr Lyons said Mr Musk's 'bombshell' email was the very definition of an ultimatum. He said a timescale was imposed and the consequence was that employment would come to an end. Ms Wegman said she did not believe that Mr Rooney had anything to do with the posts that posed a security threat that she referred to, and none of the posts she saw had his name on them. She said the email would help staff who wanted to depart as they would get severance pay, as opposed to resigning without severance. However, she said the employer did not have insight or control over who was leaving or staying, so were left with skill gaps. Ms Wegman said the email offered staff a way to get out of the company Mr Lyons said Mr Rooney did not submit any decision, but the employer decided to bring his employment to an end. He said the only rational interpretation of that is that he was dismissed by his employer. Ms Wegman accepted that he did not write 'I resign'. She said it would have been nice to have a 'no' box in the email. Mr Lyons said it would have been better if there had been a 'can't decide' box. Chair of the court Louise O'Donnell asked Ms Wegman how managers knew they were going to attract those who raised security concerns with the severance offer. Ms Wegman accepted they could stay, but the email offered them a way to get out of the company. Meanwhile, the court heard that Twitter '1.0' was a very fun place to work with great perks including ping-pong tables, meditation rooms, meals cooked by celebrity chefs and visits by 'very important Tweeps'. Ms Wegman listed the benefits workers enjoyed while giving evidence. But she told how the company ended up in a 'terrible, terrible financial situation' that led to drastic cost-cutting three years ago. She told Cathy Smith, SC for X, that Twitter is known among employees as Twitter 1.0 before its acquisition by Mr Musk in 2022. She said she believes the takeover was the largest public to private company acquisition of all time. Ms Wegman told Ms Smith that staff had a hashtag 'love where you work' that was very much felt and lived by them. X denies Mr Rooney was dismissed and further claims made by him under payment of wages laws relating to a performance bonus. The hearing is set to resume at a date that has yet to be decided.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
European unity would have broken down in a trade war with the US
Not great, but could have been worse. That was the European Union negotiators' take on the tariff deal agreed with US president Donald Trump this week. The agreement saw the EU accept tariffs – or import taxes – of 15 per cent on practically all future trade with the US. US products heading in the other direction will not be subject to similar levies when sold into the EU. Indeed many pre-Trump tariffs the bloc charged on US goods at lower rates of 1 to 4 per cent will be dropped to zero. This deal is the product of the EU's strategy of calm dialogue over confrontation. The French government has led the criticism of the tariff deal, summing it up as the EU submitting to Trump. Some in Ireland have also expressed concern, but the Government knows it is in no position to gripe. READ MORE Given its exposure and dependence on trade with the US, Ireland was insistent throughout the talks that the EU should avoid doing anything to antagonise Trump or escalate the dispute. The European Commission , the EU's executive arm that led the talks, was not negotiating a trade deal. That would involve two countries or economic blocs trashing out a mutually beneficial accord, with concessions on either side. This was a loose political agreement on tariffs, where the EU sucked up a certain amount of pain to put an end to Trump's threats of even higher charges. Thoughts of an open tariff brawl between the two sides, escalating into a trade war, struck fear into the hearts of officials and politicians in Brussels, Dublin, Berlin and many other capitals. European trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic , who was heavily involved in the talks, has insisted this truce was the best it could get. Commission officials were privately smug when UK prime minister Keir Starmer signed a deal with Trump in June locking in 10 per cent tariffs. The EU felt confident it could land more favourable terms, given its greater economic heft. That thinking put too much weight on rules that previously governed global trade relations and failed to fully consider Trump's animus towards the European project. The EU also failed to fully grasp Trump's vision of tariffs as leverage for negotiating concessions from allies and generating tax revenue. In a normal year the US collects about €8 billion from – mostly very low – tariffs on EU goods. Internal commission calculations predict Trump's tariff shakedown will lead to about €80 billion a year being collected by the US. Those sums even take account of some slowdown in trade as a result of the tariffs raising the cost of EU-made products in the US. The alternative would have been to call the US president's bluff and see if he followed through on threats to put 30 per cent tariffs on trade on August 1st. Turmoil in the financial markets previously forced Trump to reverse the excesses of his 'liberation day' tariff agenda. This might have happened again. The problem for European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen was that EU unity would not withstand any kind of prolonged trade war. An autocratic system such as China's can unilaterally match Trump's tariffs with its own, increasing the rates again and again to force Washington to the negotiating table on a more equal footing. The EU is a composite of 27 member states, each with different economic pain thresholds and perspectives on how the talks should be run. France is talking a tough game now. It was also lobbying hard behind the scenes to water down proposed retaliatory tariffs, one of the main pieces of leverage in the talks. Paris wanted the commission to drop plans to threaten counter-tariffs on US whiskey, bourbon and agricultural produce, fearing French wine, champagne and dairy would be targeted in response. Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Harris sent Sefcovic a shopping list of US products the Government wanted spared. It included aircraft, bourbon, agricultural goods, medtech, thoroughbred horses, animal feed and ingredients used by food producers. Ireland's had been one of the loudest voices of caution. The Government pushed back against the idea of the EU using emergency powers to target US multinationals and tech giants in the dispute. The commission was afraid a cycle of US tariffs and EU counter-tariffs would have put millions of jobs in Europe at risk. In such a scenario the governments of Germany, Italy, Ireland and others would have been clamouring, if not screaming, for the EU to cut a quick deal that stopped the economic bleeding. The end result of that alternative timeline might still have been blanket US tariffs of 15 per cent or painfully higher rates. Maybe Trump would have blinked first. We won't know.
Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
The World of the Cold War by Vladislav Zubok: Three decades on, echoes remain in today's turbulent world
The World of the Cold War: 1945-1991 Author : Vladislav Zubok ISBN-13 : 978-0241696149 Publisher : Pelican Guideline Price : £25 Back in 1962 Irish people were far more devoutly religious than they are today. In October of that year the confessionals in Catholic churches were overwhelmed with sinners seeking repentance. But this manifestation of piety stemmed not from the sermons of the blood-curdling preachers who abounded in those days. Its origins were in the atheistic citadel of the Moscow Kremlin. The world was undergoing the Cold War's most dramatic crisis. The Soviet Union had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba, close enough to threaten devastation in the United States. A dramatic standoff between president John F Kennedy and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev grabbed the world's attention. The possibility of mutual annihilation loomed large or, in the more religious terms of the day, 'The End of the World was Nigh'. I was just out of my teens at the time but I remember the fear clearly. In The World of the Cold War, Vladislav Zubok, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, recounts the crisis and the Cold War in general vividly. He has a unique perspective on the issue. Born and raised in Moscow, he has spent three decades of his life in the USSR and three decades in the West. The Cold War may have ended more than 30 years ago but Zubok shows it is strongly echoed in today's turbulent world. One striking instance is contained in the part dealing with the Cuban crisis. READ MORE In this part of the world we are inclined to concentrate on Europe's Cold War ... But in the bloody stalemate in Korea, the allied defeat in Vietnam and a latter-day 'Scramble for Africa' the Cold War turned hot Khrushchev, speaking to an Indian diplomat afterwards, noted that: 'History tells us that in order to stop a conflict, one should begin not by exploring the reasons why it happened, but by pursuing a ceasefire.' That is precisely the opposite to the stance taken by Vladimir Putin on Ukraine. Zubok initially deals with the question of how the Cold War began. How did the heroic wartime Soviet allies, led by 'Uncle Joe', become the West's peacetime enemies? Zubok opts for a more concrete reason than a clash of ideologies: the struggle for Europe. In 1815 the armies of Tsar Alexander occupied Paris but, satisfied with their victory, withdrew and went home. Stalin, recipient of a bejewelled sword from Churchill for his wartime leadership, did not withdraw. He kept his armies in situ, occupied East Berlin, East Germany as well as eastern and central Europe. Churchill's adulation turned to nightmare. What if he moved further west? What if his forces glared across the channel at England? In this part of the world we are inclined to concentrate on Europe's Cold War. It was, after all, in Berlin and Vienna and Budapest and other European cities where the two sides were in closest contact. But in the bloody stalemate in Korea, the allied defeat in Vietnam and a latter-day 'Scramble for Africa' the Cold War turned hot. It was hot too in Latin America where the US-backed right-wing general Augusto Pinochet overthrew the moderate socialist and democratically elected government of Salvador Allende. In the US itself and the USSR as well as almost everywhere else, fears of nuclear catastrophe abounded. They eased during the period of detente but it too was brought to an unwelcome conclusion. And then it all came to an end. But when did this end take place? Some opt for the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Malta summit of 1989 when George HW Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev declared the Cold War to be over. Others, including Bush in a U-turn on his Malta declaration, date it from the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. I lived through the latter period as this paper's Moscow Correspondent and later as an observer for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe in all the regions of the former USSR. I have met and spoken with leaders such as Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin as well as insiders including the consummate Soviet diplomat Anatoly Dobrynin, who played a part in defusing the Cuban crisis, and Georgy Arbatov, whose advice on the USSR's future was spurned by Gorbachev. I witnessed the failed putsch by hardliners against Gorbachev in 1991 and thanks to Western-inspired economic 'shock therapy' saw ordinary Russians turn against democracy as they became destitute and insiders gained immense wealth. I agree, therefore, with Zubok's conclusions that the Western alliance played its part in creating the Russia we face today and hope, perhaps vainly, that he is wrong when he sums it up eloquently in these words: 'The triumphalism of the liberal order and the mislearned or unlearned lessons of the past appear self-evident 30 years after the end of the Cold War. At the same time it would be another folly, perhaps the ultimate one, to assume that at any time, in any country, a new generation of political leaders can avoid the mistakes of the past purely by being excellent students of history'.
