A number of leading figures within the League of Ireland, as well as a former Ireland manager and women’s captain, have signed an open letter calling on the FAI to refuse to play Israel in the UEFA Nations League later this year.
A campaign by Irish Sport for Palestine, titled “Stop the Game” has been launched, with an open letter backed by high-profile figures in Irish soccer.
Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland chair and Shamrock Rovers captain Roberto Lopes – who is set to play in this summer’s World Cup for Cape Verde – urged the FAI to reverse its stance.
“We have to stop the game. As players and fans, our natural instinct is always to get out there and compete, but this is a moment where we need to look at the bigger picture. We can’t ignore the humanitarian catastrophe in Palestine; the sheer loss of life there has to take precedence over any sporting consideration. Ireland has an opportunity here to lead—to be a pioneer and do what others won’t. We need to be brave enough to say enough is enough. We can’t just stand by. Please, stop the game,” Lopes wrote.
Former men’s national team manager Brian Kerr and 2019 FAI women’s player of the year Louise Quinn are among those from inside the sport that added their names to the campaign.
Christy Moore, Fontaines DC and Kneecap are also among the 38 signatories.
The open letter addressed to the FAI called on them “to refuse to participate in the two scheduled UEFA nations league games against Israel.”
With “the clear and ongoing serious breaches of UEFA & FIFA statute regarding Israeli teams playing on occupied Palestinian lands”, adding “as a member of UEFA you have a duty to upload [sic] these rules if UEFA will not”.
The letter also highlights the landslide vote of FAI members last year, where 93% voted to instruct the organisation to call for Israel’s suspension to UEFA.
The FAI confirmed it would be fulfilling the fixtures, stressing that “serious consequences” would result from forfeiting the games, which would “materially harm the long-term sporting interests of Irish football”.
The governing body said at the time they had consulted with the government and An Garda Síochána and were satisfied that the home tie could be staged in Dublin.
“I don’t see a difference between Fifa and Uefa banning Russia and not Israel,” – Irish Manager Heimir Hallgrímsson
Heimir Hallgrímsson wants Israel thrown out of UEFA and FIFA competitions ; “Republic of Ireland manager Heimir Hallgrímsson believes Fifa and Uefa should remove Israel from their competitions in the same way that they banned Russia.
Both Fifa and Uefa banned all Russian clubs and international teams on February 28th 2022, four days after the invasion of Ukraine.
“I don’t see a difference between Fifa and Uefa banning Russia and not Israel,” said Hallgrímsson. “I don’t see the difference.
“I am not speaking on behalf of the FAI – I just don’t see the difference.”
People at the vigil for Yves Sakila on Henry Street. Photo by Shamim Malekmian.
It reminded him of George Floyd, pinned to the ground and dying under the knee of a cop on the streets of Minneapolis, said Jude Hughes, a Black Irish community activist.
“It’s literally George Floyd on the streets of Dublin. I can’t believe that scene and that guy with his knee on his neck,” he said, in a Zoom meeting on Monday night.
The emergency meeting was organised by the Africa Centre for Black people across the country to come together and process their feelings about what had happened on Friday – and strategise on how to respond.
More than 100 people had joined.
On Friday, Yves Sakila was pinned to the ground on Henry Street by a few men, a video circulated on social media showed.
At one point, one of them, an older man in a black suit, throws himself onto his neck and pushes down with his right knee.
A few seconds later, he removes his knee, but keeps pressing on his neck with his hands. Someone else is pinning his head to the ground. Other men press on his body.
You can hear Sakila grunting and moaning amidst the chatter of the passersby.
By the end of it, he seemed unconscious. He was later pronounced dead.
The ex-taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader is helping to create a new far-right cover which will be used to justify fresh atrocities at accommodation centres, random attacks on immigrants, racist violence and murder.
There is blood on Bertie’s hands. Perhaps Fianna Fáil will expel Ahern again.
Ahern resigned from FF in 2012, days before he was due to be expelled. The state’s Mahon Tribunal ruled he was financially corrupt. This was Ahern’s stellar achievement : the dimmest dogs 🐶 in Irish ☘️ streets know the Fianna Fáil party has been corrupt since its foundation in 1926! The former leader rejoined the Soldiers of Destiny in 2023.
Getting expelled from an organization more financially dodgy than the average Swiss Bank is an Olympian feat.
Bertie continues to cause no end of trouble for his party – so, perhaps, he will jump into the Independent Ireland party, where he can wallow in racist gutters alongside other ex-colleagues such as the dangerous and eccentric Cork North-Central TD Ken O’Flynn.
Many thanks to Marion McEvoy for letting us know the sad news. Eilish was a heroic activist in the National H Block / Armagh Campaign from 1979 to 1981. Smashing H-Block After that she supported many similar anti-imperialist causes which were not popular with the Irish establishment. In the late 1960’s Eilish worked as a nurse. When she got to know me as a political activist, she told me that she had become a great friend of my father Denis in 1968-9. He was suffering from terminal cancer. Like Eilish, he was determined to continue seeing the funny side of life.
I am sure many other friends have great memories of Eilish.
Eilish Moore ran the Meeting Place, a bastion of Dublin’s folk scene in the 1970s for many years. She came from a talented musical family which included her brothers Christy Moore and Luka Bloom (aka Barry Moore).
Condolences to all her friends, family members, feminists, socialists, and comrades. She will be missed.
John Meehan April 25 2026
Vincent Doherty adds :
Eilish was a dear friend who got me back singing and playing music. After having lost the spirit during the 1980’s she encouraged me and invited me a few times to perform at the gigs she ran in Mother Redcaps.Her son Conor loaned me a flute to get me started again and l’m incredibly indebted to Eilish and her extended family for a lot of support I hot over the years. I loved her rougish laugh and her irrevrrence towards various sacred cows. Eilish really was one of a kind.
Eilish Moore sings on RTÉ’s Late Late Show in 1988 :
Seated beside Nancy Moore in the audience is her eldest daughter Eilish, who accepts an invitation to sing. She performs a version of ‘The Work Song’ a cappella. The Work Song was written by Canadian singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle. It was first released by the American singer Maria Muldaur in 1973.
This episode of ‘The Late Late Show’ was first broadcast on 13 May 1988. The presenter is Gay Byrne.
On 1 March 2025, the family uploaded “Puppets on a Kremlin String,” about the betrayal of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Donald Trump and JD Vance to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, to the tune of Coldplay’s song “Viva La Vida“. The Marshes write, “Our version takes the sense of history, the pain, the trauma, and the notion of world rule, and applies it to the most disgusting media spectacle to date – with already several to choose from – of the new US administration. Like many around the world, as well as disheartened friends in the US, we watched the undignified ambush of Zelensky’s trip to the White House with dismay and pity. It was a very unbecoming sight – just at a human level – even without all the higher stakes, deals, implications, and nightmares unfolding as another win is handed to Putin, and more pressure placed on Ukraine. Like many we are hoping for a miraculous path forward that can somehow turn Trump’s intensity into an outcome that can transform into a lasting peace – but given how misdirected the fury and energy and narrative is at the moment, it’s quite hard to see it turning out other than a quickfire US withdrawal of support. If that happens, we’re in a cowardly new world.”
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.Stay free
Through the winter’s ice and cold Down Nicollet Avenue A city aflame fought fire and ice ‘Neath an occupier’s boots King Trump’s private army from the DHS Guns belted to their coats Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law Or so their story goes
Against smoke and rubber bullets In the dawn’s early light Citizens stood for justice Their voices ringing through the night And there were bloody footprints Where mercy should have stood And two dead left to die on snow-filled streets Alex Pretti and Renee Good
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice Singing through the bloody mist We’ll take our stand for this land And the stranger in our midst Here in our home they killed and roamed In the winter of ’26 We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis
Trump’s federal thugs beat up on His face and his chest Then we heard the gunshots And Alex Pretti lay in the snow, dead Their claim was self defense, sir Just don’t believe your eyes It’s our blood and bones And these whistles and phones Against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice Crying through the bloody mist We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis
Now they say they’re here to uphold the law But they trample on our rights If your skin is black or brown my friend You can be questioned or deported on sight
In chants of ICE out now Our city’s heart and soul persists Through broken glass and bloody tears On the streets of Minneapolis
Oh our Minneapolis, I hear your voice Singing through the bloody mist Here in our home they killed and roamed In the winter of ’26 We’ll take our stand for this land And the stranger in our midst We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis We’ll remember the names of those who died On the streets of Minneapolis
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.
This article was published in the September 26 2025 edition of the Irish Times.
If Northerners had a vote, Catherine Connolly would be our next president
Northerners have a vested interest in an election portrayed as seminal for the abolition of partition. But they don’t have a vote
Catherine Connolly’s presidential election campaign would be a stroll to the park if Ireland honoured all its citizens’ rights. Instead, the Independent candidate is being accused of lip service by two parties that have ensured the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of potential voters from choosing their head of state.
Irish citizens living in Northern Ireland are allowed no say in an election that is being billed as crucial to their future constitutional status. Sinn Féin insists the next president must “champion a united Ireland”. Fine Gael says its candidate, Heather Humphreys, as a Presbyterian from a Border county, would symbolically unite the island. Fianna Fáil presents its candidate, Jim Gavin, as being Border-blind due to his involvement with the all-island GAA. Yet those living in the North’s six counties are silenced in the election. Their continuing exclusion reduces them to nominal citizens.
Addressing his party’s annual conference last weekend, DUP leader Gavin Robinson rebuked the Republic for what he called its “institutional intolerance of Protestant culture and heritage” but the southern State’s starker prejudice is against its own citizens in the North. Under the 1956 Irish Nationality and Citizenship Act, affirmed by the 1998 Belfast Agreement, people in Northern Ireland are entitled to choose to be citizens of Ireland. As such, the Irish President is their president. Ever since Mary Robinson’s election to the Áras in 1990, the office’s holders have striven to represent them with their presence and their utterances. But across the Liffey in Government Buildings the realpolitik means that extending voting rights to Northern citizens would be electoral hara-kiri, virtually handing Sinn Féin the presidency on a plate.
Seriously, nothing good will come out of this, save a bit of schadenfreude. It will only enrage the far right even more and replacements will be found. Just like the daft idea of shooting Trump. He survived and made the most of it propaganda-wise. I am completely opposed to any idea of assassination of our opponents.
Let’s wait to see the results of the police investigation. At the time of writing no definitive evidence is in the public domain about the identity of the assassin.
Graham Linehan, the obsessive anti-trans comedy writer (Father Ted), has been arrested by British cops in a London airport after a ten hour transatlantic flight. “I arrived back in London to discover the UK is still a police state run by trans activists”
Given that Graham Linehan blogged about it, when he arrived back in Heathrow last night he was arrested over this tweet and two others. He has to show up for another interview in October. He also ended up in hospital with high blood pressure and is banned from tweeting.
Tomás Ó Flatharta 