I thank and commend Sinn Féin on bringing forward this motion, which sets out very clearly the mechanisms available to the Government to assist the FAI in making the right decision and, basically, to stop the game. That is what it does. It gives the Government the clear tools that we know will work should it choose to act and should it choose to show leadership. I will talk first about leadership because what we have not seen from this Government is leadership on this issue. Since February, when we knew this was an issue, when we were drawn against Israel and the FAI came out very quickly and said what its plans were, there has been nothing from the Government. There has been nothing to assure us that it is even looking into this, dealing with it or engaging with the issue at all. Quite recently, in committee, I asked the Minister of State about anything he and his colleague the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, had done regarding the broadcasting side of things and there was very little by way of satisfactory answer. The response basically seems to be, "It is an FAI decision and we are not going to go near it." Of course, the Government cites "governance" as the reason that it cannot do this and states that the FAI is a sports governing body and there is no place for politics in that. However, I have seen governance weaponised by Cabinet Ministers in this Government whereby, essentially, when it suits them to take action or engage appropriately with particular bodies, they will choose to do so, and when it does not suit them, they decide to leave their hands off. This is in stark contrast to the leadership shown by Deputy Joanna Byrne, who has taken on great personal sacrifice for her stance on this issue. She is to be commended. She is representative of a football community here in Ireland which has shown the same resolve and the same leadership in saying, "We will not tolerate this and we do not want this game to go ahead." It must be deafening for the Minister of State to hear the cacophony of support and the growing momentum that I told him two weeks ago would happen for the Stop the Game campaign. It must be deafening for him and his colleagues who have decided, instead of showing leadership, to say, "We will not go to the match because". They have not said why but presumably it is because the Minister of State does not support sportswashing, although he denied in that committee that he would even call this sportswashing. He has said he will not go to the match, will not engage with the FAI and will not do anything to influence it to change its decision, yet what he will do is support its position and, potentially, support the removal of this match to another location, which would mean that all of this would fall on the shoulders of the Irish national team. Those men would be asked to make a choice to step onto that pitch or not. From day one, this is the very thing I warned we needed to avoid. That pressure should not be placed on them. They have worked their whole lives for a particular goal but are surrounded by a country telling them that this game should not go ahead and they have to make that decision. That is so unfair. It is a direct result of the lack of leadership that is being shown by the Government on this specific issue. This genocide has been going on for two and a half years. It is being livestreamed onto all of our phones. Some 75,000 men, women and children are dead in Palestine, although we all know that is a conservative figure because of the formulation of those statistics, which require a various set of data to determine that. We know that these figures are not representative of the true atrocity that Israel is inflicting in Gaza and increasingly in the West Bank and in Lebanon. Eleven children a day now die or get injured in Lebanon because of Israeli strikes and 20% of the country is occupied. They are not stopping. They will not stop. The global order is not going to stop them. If you read Francesca Albanese's most recent book, When the World Sleeps, what she will tell you is what we have to do - the only thing that we can do - is sanction them and boycott them. We have to distance ourselves from Israel and say that we do not support this. This is a beautiful opportunity for the Government to do that. The Minister of State said something in his speech about no such international consensus existing in relation to Israel. That was following the comments on why it is not the same as the Russian example. That comment really irks me because time and again his colleagues stand in this Chamber and tell me that we need to reach international or European level consensus to be effective against Israel. If that consensus does not exist, which the Minister of State has conceded in his speech, then how do we start it? We stand up and we are leaders. That is what we do. We say we are not going to play Israel and then all of a sudden other countries have to answer the same question and we start to see these things happen. It is exactly what happened with Mary Manning refusing to handle a grapefruit in Dunnes Stores decades ago, which we know now has been lauded as a key part in the drive towards dismantling the apartheid South African state. The fragmentation that is being perpetrated on the Palestinian people, includes the tactic of dividing communities literally and physically on a map, but also within communities by taking children out of homes and detaining them for long enough that their communities are suspicious of them when they go back. These atrocities amount to an organised genocide. They have been practising and preparing for it for decades, and this is their final phase. We are standing complicit if we do not act. The thing that angers all of us the most is the impunity. Again, here is his opportunity to deal with that - to show them that this cannot happen. I will talk about some of the specific ways in which football has been a feature of this genocide because Israel has at least ten football teams playing on illegally occupied Palestinian territory. Israel has killed over 1,000 Palestinian football players and sportspeople. Just last week, two members of the Palestinian women's team were detained. All sports facilities and infrastructure have been destroyed. Article 72.2 of FIFA statutes states: "Member associations and their clubs may not play on the territory of another member association without the latter's approval." The ICJ ruling on occupied territories in 2024 was that the territories are illegal, ergo, it is illegal. There is ample evidence for why Israel should not be playing in these competitions. The Minister of State essentially threw up his hands and the way he put it in his speech was that the decision lies with UEFA and FIFA to decide against it. He said that "it is at this level that strategic decisions should be taken rather than by individual countries' NGBs." If the Minister of State is waiting for UEFA or FIFA to do it, then he is going to be waiting a while, so what we have to do as a country is stand up and start the process. We must stand up in solidarity with the people who are being killed in Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank and now in Lebanon. I will touch on some of those legal obligations because, obviously, we have the Genocide Convention and the ICJ ruling, of which the Government is the custodian. It is the one who has to carry out the responsibilities that we have as a State under those. We also have to ratify the UN's International Convention against Apartheid in Sports. I want to touch on the Court of Arbitration for Sport. One of the reasons that is put forward is the potential sanctions and financial implications of this. If we look at the case law from that particular jurisdiction, it seems to me quite clear that UEFA will not be able to impose any such sanctions. You need to grow a pair, as a Government, and do this and stop the game.
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What was it?
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I said "the Government" actually.
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