Irish attorney general raises concerns on sanctioning services in Israeli settlements

Ireland's top government lawyer has raised several "significant" legal and practical issues in long-awaited advice on whether planned curbs on trade with Israeli settlements should be extended to services, a junior minister said on Thursday.

Ireland has been preparing a law to curb trade with settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, facing pressure at home to widen the scope of the ban from goods to services, while Israel and the United States want the bill scrapped.

Ireland has been one of the European Union's most outspoken critics of Israel's assault in Gaza. But sources told Reuters last October that the bill was set to be limited to goods after lobbying by U.S. businesses based in the country.

"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," Neale Richmond, a junior minister at the department of foreign affairs, told parliament.

Reuters