I thank Deputy Joanna Byrne and her colleagues in Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion this evening. The Green Party will be supporting this motion and also the motion being brought forward by the Social Democrats tomorrow. In particular, I thank the leadership of the Stop The Game campaign that has operated across Ireland in recent weeks. It is a campaign made up of grassroots supporters, passionate supporters of football in Ireland. They are people who dedicate so much of their lives to supporting our national teams in all their shapes and sizes. They are also people who are not prepared to allow our national teams, our national jersey and our national flag to be used as tools of sportswashing the genocide that is taking place in Gaza. I salute their leadership. I feel that leadership is lacking in Government and the FAI. It is simply not good enough to say that this match can be played abroad in a supposedly neutral venue, somewhere where Irish people will not be able to demonstrate our abhorrence of this game taking place. It is not enough for this game to be played behind closed doors without a crowd because out of sight is not out of mind and Irish football supporters are not prepared to see our national jersey used in this particular way. Nor is it good enough, as some have suggested, that it should be left up to the individual consciences of players - let them decide if they want to play or not. That is far too much pressure and far too great an obligation to put on young sportspeople at the beginning of their careers. What we need to see is leadership from the Government to give a very clear statement that Ireland should not play this match in any circumstances and let that be followed up by the FAI, recognising there are consequences to that. We see those consequences and we meet them with our eyes open. In just four weeks' time, Ireland will take on the Presidency of the EU. The themes we have adopted for that Presidency are competitiveness, security and values and yet on this issue and on the issue of Palestinian statehood, too often, we allow our values to be trimmed due to fear. We are trimming our values on the issue of whether Ireland should play this match. Tomorrow, we will see our values trimmed when an occupied territories Bill lite, minus services, will be guillotined before this House. Ireland should not allow our values to be shaped by fear of the Trump administration. We should say "No" to this match and we should say "Yes" to an occupied territories Bill that includes services.

Sentiment score: 0.22