Sports Events
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-11
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Joanna Byrne (SF), Louth

I am delighted the Minister of State has learned a new word since Tuesday night-Wednesday morning. In the response which the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, gave to me on Tuesday night and which was carbon-copied by the Minister of State, Deputy Dooley, on Wednesday morning, the word "genocide" never featured at all. It is great that he has learned that word in the past two days. Even though he has now acknowledged there is a genocide and obviously understands what a genocide is, he still cannot grasp the magnitude of what this means to the Irish footballing community. They do not want this match to proceed. They do not want to normalise sports-washing.
Ireland playing Israel normalises a genocidal regime and gives cover for statute violations, for apartheid and for war crimes. In standing up and saying he will not attend these fixtures all he is doing is putting that pressure and that burden on our footballers. Inevitably, if this goes ahead, our footballers will have to make a conscious choice individually or collectively as a team as whether they should fulfil this fixture and it is not fair. The Minister of State had an opportunity this week to empower the FAI and to support the FAI. So, I do not buy all this back tapping for the FAI. The Minister of State had an opportunity to stand with the FAI, to stand with Irish football and to stand with our Irish football team but he chose not to. Shame on him.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-11/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:05+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-11