{"id":152279,"date":"2026-06-09T11:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/152279\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T11:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T11:58:08","slug":"fai-and-government-warned-of-judicial-review-over-football-fixtures-with-israel-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/152279\/","title":{"rendered":"FAI and Government warned of judicial review over football fixtures with Israel \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Government ministers and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI)<\/a> have been warned of a judicial review over football fixtures with Israel.<\/p>\n

The Irish Sport for Palestine campaign group has issued a pre-action letter to the FAI, Sport Ireland<\/a> and the Ministers for Sport and Justice calling for a boycott of the Nations League fixtures in September and October.<\/p>\n

Ireland\u2019s men\u2019s football team are scheduled to play Israel on September 27th and October 4th in the Uefa<\/a> Nations League.<\/p>\n

The letter issued through Phoenix Law solicitor Darragh Mackin raises a number of legal arguments and requests a response within 21 days or the campaign will seek a full judicial review.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Irish Sport for Palestine said its legal correspondence asserts that the FAI and Sport Ireland must undertake due diligence to ensure the spending of public funds complies with domestic human rights obligations.<\/p>\n

It also says the the Minister for Justice must ensure steps are taken to refuse entry to any person associated with the Israeli football delegation that may have committed offences under the Geneva Conventions.<\/p>\n

Recipients of the letter have been contacted by PA for comment.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, former minister for justice Alan Shatter<\/a> has described calls for a boycott of the the Republic of Ireland<\/a>\u2018s matches against Israel<\/a>, scheduled for later this year, as \u201cutterly and completely and totally insane\u201d. <\/p>\n

Shatter told Newstalk Breakfast with Anton Savage that he was personally \u201ccompletely fed up with the attempt to sabotage every aspect of Irish sport and bring issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m personally sickened by the prejudice, the escalating anti-Semitism, the selective outrage based on false narratives. Let\u2019s have backbone and let this match proceed.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the same programme Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> TD Mark Ward said if the games went ahead they would give Israel an opportunity for \u201csportswashing\u201d. He said Israel was an apartheid state and this had been highlighted in the findings of international human rights organisations. Shatter said if Ireland did not participate in the match it would \u201chand\u201d points to Israel and have little material impact on the issues raised by Ward. The Sinn F\u00e9in TD disagreed and said many examples from the past of countries refusing to play sporting fixtures against South Africa and Russia showed such stances could be effective. <\/p>\n

\u201cLet\u2019s be real here,\u201d said Shatter. \u201cWe boycotted Eurovision. It had no impact of any description on anything to do with anything that\u2019s happening in the Middle East. We now want to self-harm Irish football.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was another example of selective outrage,\u201d he added. \u201cIn August, the Irish cricket team is playing Afghanistan. There\u2019s a population of 45 million in Afghanistan. One half, over 20 million, are women. Women in Afghanistan under the fundamentalist Taliban regime are invisible. They\u2019re neither seen nor heard. Mothers aren\u2019t allowed to go to parks with their own children or to children\u2019s playgrounds. Women over 10 are denied any education. <\/p>\n

\u201cMedical doctors in parts of Afghanistan who are men will not provide medical assistance to pregnant women. There\u2019s an increase in maternal deaths. And Afghanistan is a horrific place. There\u2019s no protest about the cricket matches.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe welcomed Qatar<\/a> into the Aviva Stadium only last week<\/a>. Qatar is the country that hosts Hamas that conducted not just the barbaric atrocity of October 7th [but], which fired over 25,000 missiles into Israel over a two-year period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in TD Joanna Byrne<\/a> described her party\u2019s motion calling on the Government to support demands to stop the Ireland-Israel match from going ahead as an important intervention. Speaking on RT\u00c9 radio\u2019s Morning Ireland, Byrne said it had become \u201cabundantly clear in recent weeks as the Stop the Game campaign has grown momentum that the Irish people do not want Ireland playing Israel while the Palestinian people continue to endure genocide, occupation and apartheid. <\/p>\n

\u201cI feel our motion is perhaps an important intervention as it paves the way for the FAI to do the right thing by refusing to participate in these matches, in asking the Government to support the FAI in that decision and the implications that might follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such calls were not just coming from Sinn F\u00e9in, she said, and not just from politicians, they were also supported by the Professional Football Association of Ireland, trade unions, \u201cthe vast majority of Irish football fans and, crucially, they\u2019re supported by the FAI\u2019s own membership and their own stakeholders.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018It\u2019s not right\u2019: John O\u2019Shea makes strong statement on Ireland v Israel matchesOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The FAI issued a statement on Monday saying its board was continuing to meet to \u201cdiscuss the operational aspects\u201d of hosting the men\u2019s international Nations League football fixture, which is due to be played in Dublin\u2019s Aviva Stadium on October 4th.<\/p>\n

The FAI said it was also engaging with European football\u2019s governing body Uefa on the issue and that a further statement would be issued after the board meets again on Thursday.<\/p>\n

Amid the prospect of major protests around the game and mounting calls for a boycott of the match because of Israel\u2019s ongoing military operations in the Middle East, there is speculation the FAI may seek to have the game played in a different European country. <\/p>\n

On Monday, T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> said the decision was a matter for the FAI. – Additional reporting PA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Government ministers and the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) have been warned of a judicial review over football…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[33],"tags":[18044,48834,4002,2254,1411,37,48833,48835,271,4003,36320,3993],"class_list":["post-152279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-alan-shatter","tag-drogheda-united","tag-football-association-of-ireland-fai","tag-gaza-strip","tag-hamas","tag-israel","tag-mark-ward","tag-newstalk-radio","tag-qatar","tag-republic-of-ireland-mnt","tag-rte","tag-sinn-fein"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116720035644205119","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}