Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin, People Before Profit candidate in the Dublin Central by-election, is currently inside Croke Park as part of an occupation during the GAA’s Annual Congress, following a protest outside the Jones’s Road entrance this morning.
The protest, organised by the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Irish Sport for Palestine and Gaels Against Genocide in Gaza, gathered at 11am before activists filed into GAA headquarters demanding that the organisation end its sponsorship relationship with Allianz.
“Allianz is linked to arms companies complicit in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It has invested €1 billion in Israeli war bonds and has billions more investments in Israel” Ó Ceannabháin said from inside Croke Park.
“The GAA cannot claim to stand for community and solidarity while taking money tied to the destruction of Palestinian lives.”
The call to cut ties with Allianz has been backed by inter-county players and prominent GAA figures, including former Dublin footballer David Hickey and Meath legend and pundit Colm O’Rourke.
“This is not coming from the margins,” Ó Ceannabháin said. “It is coming from within the GAA family itself. From Bloody Sunday to cultural resistance, the GAA has never stood on the sidelines of injustice. Its leadership must now decide which side of history it is on.
“Our sporting bodies must not be complicit in genocide. The message from Jones’s Road today is clear: cut the ties.”