Exclusion of Israel from Sporting Fixtures: Motion [Private Members] Dail Éireann — 2026-06-10 ============================================================ Sinéad Gibney (SD), Dublin Rathdown I thank everybody for their incredible contributions today. We have heard some really impassioned, very well informed and evidence-based detailed contributions from everybody on these opposition benches, unified in our message for the Minister of State to stop the game. What a shame that those contributions fall not just on deaf ears but there are no ears here as there is barely any representation from the Government. I welcome that the Minister of State, Deputy McConalogue, has been able to return here to the debate. I know he did explain in advance that he had another engagement but honestly it did not really make any difference because the words we heard delivered from his colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Timmy Dooley, were the exact same words we heard last night in a debate on a different motion. I am just shocked at that. The Ministers of State literally just changed the numbers at the top of the documents. This is the level of engagement they have given to this motion and to our work as parliamentarians to represent people who are appalled at the thought of us playing Israel in a soccer game. That is all the Ministers of State bothered to do; just change the number on a motion and read the script back to us. The Minister of State's take on our motion is simply wrong. We are not trying to penalise the sporting community. We are not trying to set back Olympians and athletes in any sport. That is not what we are trying to do. It displays for me that the Minister of State does not understand what boycott actually means. As other colleagues have said, and as I called out to the Minister of State last night when he read out the exact same speech, the whole idea about this is that there is not the same consensus in the international community about Israel as there has been for Russia and other countries where we have seen a united action against them. We do not have that. In the absence of that, and in the Minister of State's now acknowledged acceptance that we do not have that, what we have to try to do one by one, as individual beings and as individual nations, is to stand up and say "No, we will not take that". What will happen is that a domino set of actions will follow, which means that we will not be the ones penalised and our sports people will not be the ones penalised but it will be Israel who will be penalised because they will not be able to stand in resistance to the actions that we start. That is what boycott, divestment and sanctions do. That is how it works and it seems to be lost on you guys completely. This genocide is unique because we are all seeing the atrocities. We are all aghast because the other thing we are seeing is the inaction of governments the world over. I mentioned Al-Haq earlier. One of its other contributors was really powerful in their description. They said that not only is the inaction clear from governments but those same governments have ministers who have been to Palestine. The Minister of State's colleagues have been there and they have told us this. They know what is going on. The Minister of State will excuse me for getting graphic for a minute but they have heard of the decapitated bodies coming back to Palestinian communities. They have heard of and they have witnessed the atrocities that are going on there, including the not isolated but systemic rape and torture of Palestinian prisoners. They have seen this. The Government has seen this and in response chooses inaction. We are so angry as a party, as a people, as a football community and as a globe that this is being allowed to continue. We can all see it with our own eyes. The Government obfuscates, dances on the heads of pins and tells us the reasons it cannot act. We cannot tolerate it any more. The Minister of State and his colleagues know what is going on. They know the tools that are available to them. They know the words of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which say that we will save future generations from the scourges of war. The Government knows it has the ability to do this. The final quote I want to finish on was from that same group. They said that the Palestinian people and the Lebanese people are not crying out now for us to save Palestine or for us to save Lebanon. They are crying out for us as a globe to save humanity. Do the one thing that is in front of you; stop the game. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-10/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:47+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-10