Members of Amnesty Ireland gathered outside the Central Bank of Ireland yesterday morning to protest the sale of Israeli bonds in the European Union. The sale of the bonds was previously facilitated by the Central Bank of Ireland and is now overseen by the Luxembourg Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), where a simultaneous protest took place at the same time.
The protest was called after Amnesty International warned that European approval of the bond prospectus plays a role in financing Israel’s military assault on Gaza.
The University Times spoke to executive Director of Amnesty Ireland, Stephen Bowen, to learn more about what they were protesting. Bowen said the protesters were there because the Israel bond programme is “funding the genocide”, and argued that EU states, including Ireland and Luxembourg, risk complicity if they continue to facilitate it.
He continued, “The Israel bond programme is funding the genocide and we have to stop the bond programme funding genocide, because otherwise EU states, including Luxembourg and including Ireland, are going to be complicit in the commission of genocide.”
Bowen said there is an “absolutely watertight legal obligation” for EU states to stop the sale of Israeli bonds. “The International Court of Justice just two years ago ruled that Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza was illegal and that all states, including Ireland, should not recognise that wrongful act and should not do anything to facilitate, aid or abet that wrongful act.”
Ireland’s role in issuing the bonds is now limited. In 2025, after public pressure and protests, Israel requested a transfer of the prospectus approval to Luxembourg, which was granted. There are now no active Israel bond prospectuses approved by the Central Bank of Ireland, with Luxembourg taking over the EU authorisation role.
In a report released by Amnesty, the organisation argued that Ireland could have refused to transfer the approval in the first place, or rejected any renewed prospectus, on the basis of sanctions-related grounds and international legal obligations. The report says the Central Bank had the power to decline a transfer in principle, and notes that a legal basis for refusing a prospectus would include the imposition of EU financial sanctions, as happened with Russian sovereign bonds.
Amnesty speculates that the Central Bank treated the matter as a technical prospectus issue rather than a human rights or international law question. The Bank has said that it can only refuse approval where there is a clear legal basis. In practice, it maintained that no bond-specific EU sanctions were in place against Israel and that, under the prospectus framework, it was obliged to approve the transfer once the regulatory conditions were met.
Asked whether Amnesty will return to protest, Bowen said, “We’re not going away. We’re not giving up. We have no right to give up. When you see how the Palestinians have clung on to their lives and their livelihood in the face of this outrage, we have no right to give up.”
“If we stop the bonds programme, this stain on the conscience of Ireland could actually become instead a beacon of hope and perhaps if Ireland leaves, others will follow.”
