Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí (Atógáil) - Leaders' Questions (Resumed)
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-09
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

I appreciate the Deputy has raised quite a range of issues. I will take Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and the Middle East first. Ireland has taken a stand against Israel internationally and that is well recognised internationally and within the European Union. We continue on the humanitarian side to give very substantive contributions to the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA – close to €150 million at this stage. Of course we have also recognised the State of Palestine. We also intervened in South Africa's International Court of Justice case against Israel under the Genocide Convention. We made a submission, by the Attorney General, to the International Court of Justice on the legal consequences of Israel's actions in the occupied territories. Subsequently, we co-sponsored a resolution at the UN General Assembly seeking to implement the court's advisory opinion. We have been evacuating sick children, along with other countries, from Gaza. We have supported about 300 people to leave Gaza to travel to Ireland since the crisis began, and we have done much more than that.
On the match involving the Football Association of Ireland, UEFA and FIFA have their rules for members of their organisations. Their rules provide that the national football governance bodies must act independently and be free of political interference. A series of countries have been suspended from international competition in the past because of political interference. That is the reality of it. I am not involved with FIFA, or UEFA for that matter, but I believe the Deputy is correct in saying that, at EU level, we should be dealing in a more robust and stronger way in terms of suspending the EU-Israel Association Agreement. I have just met the High Representative for foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas, and have been making that point. I think she is appreciative of the very strong feeling of opinion in Ireland in respect of that. The challenge has been to try to win over a critical majority of member states to that opinion. We have written to the EU Council. I want the issue on the EU Council's meeting next week and we want to see if we can get a vote on the issue of the suspension of that association agreement. That is the Government taking its role.
The problem for the FAI and the football team, and it should not be on them, is that there will be consequences for the football team. To be fair to the Irish football team, it has made a lot of ground recently. It has had good success and is building on that platform. I do not control FIFA, which I think should deal with this globally, as should UEFA in its remit, but the bottom line could be that the football team suffers in terms of seedings and all the rest. That would have repercussions down the line for other competitions ahead. We need to act at European level. I think that is a far more effective way of dealing with the issue.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-09