President Volodymyr Zelensky is visiting Ireland on December 2 and 3 2025.
Irish Left With Ukraine stated :
We join with President Catherine Connolly in welcoming President Zelenskyy to Ireland today – Irish Left With Ukraine
This approach is shared by the leader of the Irish Labour party, Ivana Bacik :
” It will be an honour to stand with my Labour colleagues later today and welcome President Zelensky, and his wife Olena, to our national parliament.
In the face of ongoing aggression by Russia, the Ukrainian people continue to display immense bravery and resilience. We are now nearly four years into this war, a war that has shattered lives, displaced families and fundamentally changed the political landscape in Europe.The Ukrainian cause and the Ukrainian people cannot be abandoned. Labour will continue to voice our support for a free, sovereign and democratic Ukraine, taking its rightful place in the European Union. Like with Palestine, the history books will remember those who stood on the right side of history in this conflict, those who supported the Ukrainian people.”
Welcoming a leader of an oppressed invaded nation does not mean agreement with that leader’s policies. This is a no-brainer.
Gregor Kerr, Jacqueline Clarke, Des Derwin, ILWU ActivistsPalestine Solidarity Demonstration in Ukraine“Like with Palestine, the history books will remember those who stood on the right side of history in this conflict, those who supported the Ukrainian people.” – Ivana Bacik, leader of Irish Labour party
The activist Gregor Kerr notes :
The way I look at it is when I welcomed the Palestinian Ambassador to the Irish National Teachers’ Organisation (INTO) Congress, and sat beside her at several meetings, I certainly wasn’t endorsing the politics or actions of the Palestinian Authority but was extending solidarity to the Palestinian people. Similarly welcoming Zelenskyy to Dublin doesn’t endorse him, his politics or his corruption but extends solidarity to the Ukranian people.
In 2022, after Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine, People Before Profit (PBP) members of the Dublin Dáil (TD’s) attracted justified criticism because they refused to join applause supporting an online speech by President Zelensky. On that occasion President Catherine Connolly was a TD, and joined in the applause.
In 2025 a leading member of the PBP, Kieran Allen, writing on Rebel (website of the Socialist Workers’ Network) repeats the same mistake :
We will not join the welcoming party for Zelenskyy’s visit to Dublin this week
Important question : does “We” above mean the SWN, the PBP, or both.?
Adapting a quote from Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell :
‘To make one bad mistake, comrade Allen, may be regarded as a misfortune; to make it twice looks like carelessness.’
At the time of writing, it is unclear if Solidarity-PBP TD’s – Paul Murphy, Ruth Coppinger, and Richard Boyd-Barrett – are going to follow the terrible advice of the SWN’s Kieran Allen.
Kieran Allen is advocating nauseating double standards. Contrary to laughable claims in his article, neither the SWN or the PBP has participated in any worthwhile activity in solidarity with Ukraine.
He makes this mistake because he cannot accept that in both Ukraine and Palestine, Occupation is a Crime.
Let’s spell it out :
During the recent Irish presidential campaign Catherine Connolly discussed the role of Hamas in Palestine.
Connolly defends comments on Hamas and maintains Palestinians have right to self-determination
She was responding to questions raised following her rejection of Keir Starmer’s insistence that Hamas play no role in any government in Gaza.
Connolly goes on the explain :
INDEPENDENT PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE Catherine Connolly has said she abhors violence and acknowledged that Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organisation, but maintained her position that the future governance of Palestine was up to the Palestinian people, not UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
She said that all peoples should have the right to self-determination, and that this should be the case whether she happens to agree with the policies of those in power in other countries or not.
She was responding to questions raised following her rejection of Starmer’s insistence that Hamas should play no role in the future government in Gaza.
“I come from Ireland, a history of colonisation, and I would be very wary of telling a sovereign people how to run their country,” she said yesterday in an interview on BBC Radio Belfast.
Connolly’s criticism of Starmer’s position on what happens to Gaza in the event of the end to Israel’s war on the territory has drawn some criticism from her opponents, including Taoiseach Micheál Martin.
The Irish government is of the same opinion as Starmer: that Hamas should play no role in the future governance of Gaza.
On RTÉ Radio this morning, Connolly was asked about her description of Hamas as “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people”.
She pointed to the fact that Hamas was elected the last time there were elections in Gaza in 2006, before Israel imposed a blockade on the Strip, and that the media and others rely on casualty figures from Hamas because it is the party in charge of public institutions there, including the health ministry.
“They are part of the civil society of Palestine,” she said of Hamas.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
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