Banning the trade of services based in Palestinian territories illegally occupied by Israel would potentially “damage Ireland more than anybody else”, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said. The Fianna Fáil leader was speaking ahead of a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, where the long-awaited Bill, formally entitled Israeli Settlements (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2026, was finally due to be agreed by Government. It will give effect to the commitment set out in the Programme for Government to progress legislation to prohibit the importation of goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory.Once the Bill is enacted and commenced, the importation of goods originating in the settlements into Ireland will be an offence under section 14 of the Customs Act 2015.But the legislation will only include a ban on the trade of goods and not services. Speaking on Tuesday on his way into the Cabinet meeting, Martin told journalists that “fundamentally, it’s not implementable in terms of services”.“Secondly, our strong legal advice is in the negative also. And thirdly, I mean it would perhaps potentially damage Ireland more than anybody else. In terms of potential impacts on US multinationals based here and back in America, but more fundamentally, it’s just simply not implementable. And I think we need to be realistic and need to be honest with people in respect of what we can achieve via this legislation,” he said. [ Occupied Territories Bill: what’s in it, how it has changed and what the implications might beOpens in new window ]Martin said the Bill was “a further initiative in a long line of decisions that the Irish Government has taken”, and that Ireland has been “very consistent in opposing Israeli policy in the occupied territories”. Tánaiste Simon Harris said he was pleased to see the Bill being brought forward and that Ireland would now be one of the “very first countries in the European Union to pass primary legislation in relation to banning trade with the occupied Palestinian territories”.“Being very honest, though, the most effective action that we can see is at a European level,” he said. He added: “I think the impact [of the Bill] is important in terms of values. I hope it inspires and encourages other countries to do more too, but if we really want to exert maximum pressure here to end the horrors that have taken place in Gaza, and to respect international law, Europe must do more. “If Europe was to take, at an EU level, the actions that we’re taking at a domestic level, the impact would be very, very significant, and I think that’s where our focus should be.” Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee said the Government wanted to bring forward “legislation that can be implementable, that we can bring into effect as soon as possible. And that’s exactly what I’ll be proposing here today”. McEntee also confirmed she will be bringing forward legislation in the coming weeks that is designed to unravel the ‘triple lock’, the mechanism under which the Government, the Dáil and the UN Security Council all need to approve the deployment of more than 12 Irish troops on missions abroad.