I move: That Dáil Éireann: agrees that: — the State of Israel is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza, something which both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste have publicly acknowledged; — since 7th October, 2023, nearly 75,000 people have been murdered by Israel in Gaza, including more than 20,000 children; — of the more than 170,000 Palestinians who have been injured in Gaza since October 2023, 43,000 have sustained life-changing injuries, including amputations, spinal cord injuries and severe mobility impairments; — all of Gaza's infrastructure, including water, energy, healthcare and education systems, have been systematically and deliberately destroyed by Israel; — Israel has repeatedly violated a so-called ceasefire agreement that was announced in October 2025, with nearly 1,000 Palestinians being killed since then; — on 28th May, Israel's Minister of Defense, Israel Katz, confirmed that he was committed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, through large-scale forced migration of Palestinians from Gaza; — on the same date, 28th May, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, announced that he had directed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to increase its occupation of Gaza to 70 per cent of the territory; — since October 2023, nearly 1,500 Palestinians have been murdered in the West Bank; — violent settlers are acting with complete impunity in the West Bank, murdering Palestinians, razing Palestinian villages to the ground, and forcibly expelling Palestinians from their homes; — since 2020, Israeli courts have not handed down any jail sentences to settlers found responsible for the deaths of Palestinians; — Israel's bombardment of Lebanon has intensified in recent weeks, with approximately 20 per cent of Lebanon now occupied; and — according to a statement from the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), on 29th May, 11 children are being killed or injured every day in Lebanon by the IDF; notes that: — on 18th May, 2026, the IDF boarded a Gaza aid flotilla in international waters, and kidnapped humanitarian activists, including 13 Irish citizens; — those citizens were assaulted and abused by members of the Israeli military and publicly goaded by far-right Israeli Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, before being deported from Israel; — at the time, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade stated that the treatment of detained activists was "unacceptable" and "appalling"; — the East 1 settlement construction, East of Jerusalem in Gaza and the West Bank, is currently being pursued by the State of Israel, in breach of international law; — both the European Union and the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, have condemned the East 1 plan being carried out by the State of Israel, stating that these actions damage the viability of a two-state solution, and are in breach of international law; and — this represents the ongoing denial by Israel of the Palestinian people's right to self-determination, is forcible transfer, and constitutes a war crime; further notes that: — sportswashing is a known method for apartheid States to distract from breaches of human rights and other unethical conduct, including war crimes; — the Irish women's basketball team were not financially supported by the Government to boycott playing Israel in the FIBA Women's EuroBasket 2025 qualifier, despite "strong concerns" expressed from Basketball Ireland over the fixture; — in 1999, the then Fianna Fáil Government prevented a Euro 2000 qualifying match between Ireland and Yugoslavia from taking place, because of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo; — the Government acted, despite UEFA turning down a request from them to cancel the game; — at the time, the then Taoiseach said "It is not for a government to force a sporting decision on a body. But if the body refuses to make a decision, then we will have a decision to make"; — in February 2022, FIFA and UEFA banned Russia from all club and international games, after Poland and Sweden refused to play World Cup qualifiers with the team; — on 5th December, 2025, the Taoiseach described RTÉ's decision to boycott the Eurovision as "an act of solidarity"; — Irish athletes, such as Wheelchair Rugby player Alan Dineen, have stated they will refuse to play against Israel in international competitions; — the removal of a fixture from grounds within the Republic of Ireland does not represent an appropriate measure, while the support of this measure is a continued endorsement of the fulfilment of fixtures against a State currently in breach of international law; and — on 28th May, 2026, the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport and the Minister of State at the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport, announced their intention to boycott the upcoming Ireland-Israel game; and calls on the Government to: — advocate, at national and international level, for Israel to be excluded from all international sporting competitions, as long as the genocide and illegal occupation continues; and — support Irish sporting bodies to boycott fixtures, events, and competitions, where Israel is competing, as long as the genocide and illegal occupation continues. I offer our sympathies, as a party, to the victim and family of the awful incident in Belfast on Monday, condemn the racist violence that has ensued and call for calm in all communities in the North at this moment. I am proud to move the motion, which seeks to ask this Government to advocate for the exclusion of Israel from all international sporting competitions and to support Irish sporting bodies that are asked to compete in competitions where Israel has not been excluded. I thank everybody who has worked on the motion and on the communications around it, the many civil society groups that have been tirelessly working on this campaign to stop the game, including the Stop the Game group and Irish Sport for Palestine, and many other volunteers who are working hard to really express a growing sentiment in society that this is not okay and that we cannot stand alongside Israel in a sporting fixture of this nature and allow that to be a sportswashing exercise for the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and in Lebanon. I will talk through some of the details of the motion. What we essentially offer is an opportunity for the Government parties to act as leaders, to stand up and say that we will not stand for this, we will distance ourselves from Israel and that we will wholeheartedly take part in the boycott, divestment and sanction movement that is growing globally to respond to the genocide in Gaza. I also want to pre-empt some lines that the Government seems to always throw out when this is debated and when we discuss Gaza, which we discuss a lot in this Chamber. We are sick of hearing on the Opposition benches, and what is wearing really thin, is the continued line that this Government is a leader and is leading out in its response to Palestine. Dr. Susan Power is the head of legal at Al-Haq, an organisation in Palestine. She spoke in briefing rooms in Leinster House and at a committee meeting. I also heard her at an event later the date. She spoke about how when the occupied territories Bill was originally proposed in 2018, the Irish flag was raised in Bethlehem and that people in Gaza heralded that finally a country was seeing what was going on and that it was responding. She says now that she is ashamed of Ireland's lack of action and that the words the Government speaks and the limited number of actions that it is so keen to list out again and again pale into insignificance compared to what we actually need to see in terms of action. There are some many things that it can do as a government to support the Football Association of Ireland, FAI, in pushing back against UEFA on its failure to exclude Israel from the Nations League competition. Primarily, it can support the FAI in stopping the game and not playing. It can inoculate the FAI from any potential sanctions that may come its way. It can support the association in all of the fallout from any such exclusion. The Minister of State and the Government can interact with the governments from the nations involved in this Nations League so that we have a united approach. That is what boycott is and the motion offers the Government the opportunity to boycott, to be leaders in this and to gain the momentum that we need to see for push back against this genocide. One of the other lines I want to pick up on is that the Government constantly says that we, in the Opposition, do not have a monopoly on empathy. Nobody on the Opposition benches has ever claimed that we have a monopoly on empathy, but we do have empathy, and we choose to display it. In our role as Opposition Members, who have to hold the Government to account, we ask the Government: where is its empathy? Where is its leadership, and will it stop the game? There is precedent here. As we all know, a Fianna Fáil Government previously refused entry to players on similar grounds. Le linn cinedhíothaithe, níl aon rud neodrach faoi pháirt a ghlacadh i gcluichí spóirt leis an tír atá i mbun an chinedhíothaithe sin. Caithfidh muid seasamh a thógáil, mar a tugadh in aghaidh na Rúise, in aghaidh na hAfraice Theas le linn apartheid agus in aghaidh na hIúgslaive. I ask the Minister of State to please listen to what we have to say and hear our indignation. His colleague, the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, said that we – my party and I – show indignation. The Minister of State will have a whole lot of it coming at him because we are indignant at this genocide and the impunity Israel is enjoying.

Sentiment score: -0.10

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.

Sentiment score: 0.01