I thank my colleague Deputy Gibney for the work she has done on this motion. I congratulate Deputy Ennis on his maiden speech. It is a great honour for people to be able to come here and I congratulate him. Football is important to many people. This game has involved many people who would never watch a programme about politics or tune into anything to do with politics. This means a lot to people. The roll-out of this game in this country or another country has ignited a flame for many people who probably just go to football matches and never think about politics. I have been struck by that over the past while. The Government is trying to hide behind the FAI by saying this is not its issue. That is a problem because it can do other things with other organisations. It can provide funding. It is a wishy-washy argument. People are saying that politics and sport should not be involved together and have nothing to do with each other. Politics is everything. Sport is everything to many people. Of course, they are naturally intertwined. It was not an issue when Russia invaded Ukraine. International sporting bodies acted swiftly. Sanctions were introduced and its teams were excluded. Political leaders at that time were not shrugging their shoulders as they are now. There are moments when silence is not the right thing and this is one of those moments. I want to consider some numbers. Some 75,000 Palestinians have been murdered and 170,000 have been injured. The Aviva Stadium holds 51,700 for a football match. That is for a football match, where people are seated. That is not the capacity for a concert. I am talking about when people are seated. If the match were to be moved to Croke Park, which is bigger, the capacity would be 69,100. Neither of those stadiums would be big enough to hold the number of people dead because of the genocide. If people can picture that in their minds, they will realise the importance of making sure that this match is stopped. The world can see exactly what is going on with the genocide on the Palestinian people and what the Israeli Government is doing. Having that flag flying at any stadium in this country is not acceptable. Just because the match may be moved to a different country, out of sight will not be out of mind.

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