I echo Senator Fitzpatrick's good wishes to the Pride community. Happy Pride to everyone; it is going to be a great celebration.

I raise again the FAI's shameful intention to support apartheid Israel’s sportswashing. It recently announced that its upcoming fixture with genocidal Israel will be played at a venue abroad instead of at the Aviva Stadium. Using some bizarre, twisted logic, the FAI has tried to make this out to be some sort of concession to appease pro-human rights and pro-Palestinian activists, as if playing Netanyahu's fascist state behind closed doors in Hungary somehow makes this sordid affair morally better. In reality, this is a cynical move intended to prevent the hassle of the protests in Dublin which would no doubt meet the Israeli team. The vast majority of Irish people are opposed to this game going ahead. The vast majority of sportspeople and sporting communities absolutely disagree with it going ahead. This game needs to be stopped. If it had gone ahead here, there would have been huge anger facing the Israeli team and the FAI. The FAI had a chance to stand up for the footballing community, not just in Ireland but across the world, along with young children in the Gaza Strip who have been shot in the legs to stop them playing. There have been targeted attacks on them. The Israelis have turned sports facilities into graveyards and killing fields as a deliberate tactic. The FAI made this decision to take the easy way out and avoid looking the Irish people in the eye. Even more shameful than that cowardice is the FAI's deliberately deceptive attempt to warp reality and pretend that this move is an example of its solidarity with Palestine. The Palestinian Football Association has made it very clear that it does not endorse Ireland playing Israel. It has confirmed that it has not issued any statement endorsing, approving or supporting the decision to proceed with this match, and that it will not be party to any effort to normalise or contribute to the sportswashing of crimes committed against the Palestinian people.

The FAI is clearly trying to misrepresent the voices of Palestinian people as cover for their own spinelessness. There is a lot of commentary and a lot of it includes the word "neutral". The reality is that the FAI says that it is going to play in a neutral venue and commentators use that word "neutral". Any country that hosts Israel in football is not a neutral venue. It is facilitating sportswashing and genocide. Hungary is not a neutral venue. It is pro-Israel, pro-apartheid, pro-genocide and it is unacceptable to use the term "neutral", when clearly it is not a neutral act to allow and facilitate Israel playing in its country.