{"id":18135,"date":"2026-05-31T14:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/?p=18135"},"modified":"2026-05-31T14:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T13:04:13","slug":"government-attempting-to-hide-behind-fai-on-israel-ireland-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/ga\/government-attempting-to-hide-behind-fai-on-israel-ireland-game\/","title":{"rendered":"Government attempting to hide behind FAI on Israel-Ireland game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Government cop-out ignores previous political precedent of international game being cancelled\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The government cannot continue to hide behind the FAI when it comes to its position on the Israel-Ireland game, according to Social Democrats sports spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Gibney said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpeaking on RT\u00c9 today, Minister of State for Sport Charlie McConalogue said it was the FAI\u2019s decision to play the game with Israel and the government supported the FAI in making that decision.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a cop out. It also ignores previous political precedent of an Irish government stepping in to stop an international soccer game when the Irish team was scheduled to play the team of a country engaged in war crimes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn 1999, the then Fianna F\u00e1il government prevented a Euro 2000 qualifying match between Ireland and Yugoslavia from taking place\u00a0because of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo. This was despite the fact that UEFA had turned down a request from the government to cancel the game.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAt the time, then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said: \u201cIt 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\u201d. The decision was directly attributed to the &#8220;unacceptable situation in Kosovo&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was the position of Fianna F\u00e1il then. However, both the Taoiseach and his party colleague, the Minister of State, are now claiming the government is powerless to act. No one is buying this.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe government is talking out of both sides of its mouth on this issue, saying it supports the game going ahead while cabinet members announce plans to boycott it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is not good enough. Israel is committing an ongoing genocide in Gaza, engaged in wholesale ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and is carpet bombing cities and villages in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBoth the Taoiseach and T\u00e1naiste have agreed that Israel is engaged in genocide. How can they say that and then advocate for this game, against the Israeli team, to proceed?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe D\u00e1il is in recess next week, but the Social Democrats will be challenging this government&#8217;s hypocrisy at the first available opportunity.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is why the party will use its private members time, on June 10, to bring\u00a0forward a D\u00e1il motion demanding the government withdraw its support for this game. I hope that, by then, the government will have changed its position.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Government cop-out ignores previous political precedent of international game being cancelled\u00a0 The government cannot continue to hide behind the FAI when it comes to its position on the Israel-Ireland game, according to Social Democrats sports spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney. Deputy Gibney said: \u201cSpeaking on RT\u00c9 today, Minister of State for Sport Charlie McConalogue said it was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12547,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[529,738,7,497],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gaza","category-palestine","category-press-release","category-sinead-gibney"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Government attempting to hide behind FAI on Israel-Ireland game - Social Democrats<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.socialdemocrats.ie\/government-attempting-to-hide-behind-fai-on-israel-ireland-game\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"ga_IE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Government attempting to hide behind FAI on Israel-Ireland game - Social Democrats\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Government cop-out ignores previous political precedent of international game being cancelled\u00a0 The government cannot continue to hide behind the FAI when it comes to its position on the Israel-Ireland game, according to Social Democrats sports spokesperson Sin\u00e9ad Gibney. 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