The remarks were made following a discussion on Tuesday in the Irish Parliament’s joint Committee on Foreign Affairs and Trade on the “Israeli Settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (Prohibition of Importation of Goods) Bill 2025,” which is being readied for a plenum vote.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and others have previously rebuked the bill.

“This foolish move not only wrongfully targets Israel and the Jewish Community, but also harms American businesses,” Scott wrote on X on Tuesday. “They should think twice about the message they’re sending by passing this bill, which complicates our economic relationship and targets our ally.”

Huckabee wrote on X: “Did the Irish fall into a vat of Guinness and propose something so stupid that it would be attributed to [an] act of diplomatic intoxication? It will harm Arabs as much as Israelis. Sober up Ireland!” He added that the Irish government should call Israel’s foreign ministry and “say you’re sorry.”

In an interview with JNS after the sitting, Shatter said: “I think what’s happening in Ireland is now going global. It’s getting noticed, particularly in the United States.”

For U.S. multinational companies located in Ireland, especially, “there’s no doubt this bill will create major difficulties,” with potential consequences for as many as 350,000 earners in Ireland working for that sector “directly and indirectly,” he added.

Shatter also spoke at the parliamentary committee hearing on the bill, which he called antisemitic.

“In its essence, the bill is the first initiative of any European government to enact legislation to intentionally discriminate against Jews since the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945,” said Shatter, who spoke as a representative of the Ireland Israel Alliance along with jurist Natasha Hausdorff, a member of U.K. Lawyers for Israel.

“This antisemitic symbolism is reinforced by the fact that the bill contains no similar prohibition relating to the residents of any other occupied territory,” added Shatter. Other critics of the bill at the meeting included Maurice Cohen, chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, and Irish Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder.

Four major Jewish-American organizations—the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith International and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations— also condemned the bill. “The law could create significant risks for U.S. companies doing business in Israel and would fuel rising antisemitic and anti-Zionist sentiment in Ireland and elsewhere,” they warned in a statement on Tuesday.

The bill “singles out Israel and it undermines the prospect for a negotiated two-state solution by attempting to unilaterally predetermine the final status of disputed territories,” the statement continued. “We are very worried about rising antisemitism in Ireland and note with tremendous concern” Cohen’s assertion that the Irish Jewish community is “increasingly fearful,” it said.

At the parliamentary discussion, Cohen said the bill “might drive Jewish communities here in Ireland further into fear and isolation.” Whereas criticism of Israel is not antisemitism, he said, “when criticism becomes a campaign, when it becomes law—and no other state is treated the same—we have to pause. We have to question.”

Gideon Taylor, an American Jewish community leader who is originally from Ireland,“ told JNS that U.S. Jews are “increasingly worried about demonization of Israel by Ireland,” in the legislation but also in the “attempt of Ireland to reinterpret the long established law of genocide at the International Court of Justice to try to find Israel guilty of genocide.”

Ireland last year joined South Africa’s legal action against Israel for alleged genocide at the International Court of Justice, and has sought to widen the tribunal’s definition of genocide to include blocking humanitarian aid.

Representing the anti-Israel side of the debate were John Reynolds of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign; Fatin al Tamimi of the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign; and Éamonn Meehan of Sadaka – the Ireland Palestine Alliance.

“When Ireland starts, everybody will follow on because it’s a legal obligation, it’s a moral obligation for all countries, including Ireland,” Al Tamimi told the committee.

The committee’s members were not receptive to the pro-Israel side, Shatter told JNS.

“They had no real interest, I think, in anything we had to say, beyond trying to get us to agree with them in the points they kept on making. They didn’t really engage,” he said.

Beyond the bill’s potential impact on Irish-U.S. ties, it could, if passed into law, complicate Ireland’s position within the European Union, said Shatter, who served as Ireland’s minister of defense and justice for three years until 2014.

There are “complicated European Union legal issues relating to it,” because Ireland  “can’t simply unilaterally impose import restrictions on goods coming in from a third country with which the European Union has a trade agreement,” he told JNS. Such a law would trigger legal challenges in European courts, he added.

The bill states: “The importation of goods originating in an Israeli settlement is prohibited,” clarifying that “Israeli settlement” means “a city, village or industrial zone located in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”