META HAS EARNED nearly €30,000 from dozens of ads promoting the activities of the Castlebar-based Burke family on a page moderated by one of its ten siblings.

The ads include video posts of members of the Burke family heckling politicians including Taoiseach Simon Harris, Tánaiste Micheál Martin, Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman and the Minister for Education Norma Foley.

Meta has received more than €5,000 to run ads that contain video clips of the Burke family heckling figures in public since last year.

A log of all Irish-registered political advertisers and their spending in the five years since the library was launched in 2019 reveals that Burke is among the most prolific such advertisers on Meta.

The family, a group of evangelical Christians, have become well-known in recent years after taking a string of high-profile court cases and have achieved notoriety for their confrontational behaviour in courtrooms and in public.

Its members include Enoch Burke, who spent more than 400 days in jail for contempt of court over his refusal to stay away from the premises his former employer Wilson’s Hospital School before he was released in June.

During a Court of Appeal hearing about Enoch Burke’s case in March 2023, his brother Simeon Burke was arrested after what was described as a “melee” occurred when gardaí attempted to remove his sister Ammi Burke and mother Martina Burke from the court.

In May, Ammi Burke was found guilty of obstructing a garda during the same incident, while her father was found guilty of assault after a trial heard he “flung” a garda to the ground “like a red rag to a bull” when Martina Burke was escorted from court.

Figures compiled by The Journal show how Josiah Burke, who has not been involved in any of the above incidents, has paid Meta tens of thousands of euro to promote his family’s activities and to highlight Enoch Burke’s case in the past few years. 

Data from the social media giant’s ad library, which is publicly available online, shows that Burke has paid Meta €29,575 for 139 sponsored posts on his public Facebook page since April 2019.

Meta’s ad library allows anyone to track ads about politics or social causes that run have on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger in Europe since 2019, as well as details about the types of people such ads have targeted and how much was spent on them.

Sponsored posts

An analysis of ads run on Josiah Burke’s Facebook page shows that it has run 21 sponsored posts already this year. 

A number of the sponsored posts contain language criticising transgender people and questioning the authority of judges involved in the case of Enoch Burke.  

They include two ads which featured a video clip of a high-profile incident when members of his family disrupting the Taoiseach while he canvassed ahead of the local and European elections in Co Mayo.

Simon Harris subsequently criticised the incident, saying it was not a protest “when you impede someone’s movement” as he claimed had happened to him.

Meta’s ad library shows that Josiah Burke paid Meta more than €500 in June to run two ads containing a clip of Harris being targeted by members of his family.

The video was subsequently shared more than 1,000 times on Facebook and more than 4,000 people also interacted with it.

A week later, Burke paid over €500 to Meta again for another sponsored post featuring a video of family members shouting at the Tánaiste as he entered an election count centre in Co Mayo.

“Tánaiste Micheál Martin hid in the Castlebar count centre in the early hours of this morning after being questioned on Enoch Burke,” it began before criticising Court of Appeal judge Máire Whelan.

The judge, who has previously been a target of the family after she ruled against Enoch Burke in a case involving the teacher and his former employer Wilson’s Hospital School, was also named by the family in a sponsored post on Josiah Burke’s page in February.

During the video, which was shared hundreds of times on Facebook, calls of “shame on you” were directed at the Tánaiste by members of the Burke family.

Burke paid Meta more than €100 for the post, which contained a video of himself and his mother Martina calling for Máire Whelan’s resignation outside the Four Courts because they disagreed with a ruling she had made in relation to Enoch Burke.

‘Crossed the line’

The judge was also criticised by Burke in two more sponsored posts last December, which featured a clip of an incident in which Mayo-based Fine Gael TD was confronted by members of the family in a supermarket about Enoch Burke’s case while he shopped on Christmas Eve.

The clip was titled “Breaking: Alan Dillon TD (Fine Gael) confronted in Castlebar” and also had a caption criticising the appointment of Máire Whelan by Fine Gael.

“Enoch Burke sat before Máire Whelan and appealed for justice. She put him behind bars,” it said.

“We are losing our democracy and all of our rights unless we stand against this tyranny.”

The accompanying video of Dillon being heckled by the Burkes was shared more than 350 times on Facebook and received more than 2,000 other interactions. 

Dillon subsequently told The Sun that the incident left him “shook” and that what happened “crossed the line of what public representatives should ever encounter”.

Josiah Burke paid more than €400 for the two ads, which ran between 24 and 26 December last year and which contained a caption that incorrectly claimed the judge had denied Enoch Burke his constitutional rights.

Burke paid another €400 to Meta in March of this year for a sponsored post which showed another filmed encounter with Anglican Bishop Pat Storey, a patron of Enoch Burke’s former employer Wilson’s Hospital School.

The caption on post accuses Storey of “silence” over Enoch Burke’s case.

“As patron, Pat Storey oversees the ongoing promotion of transgender ideology in Wilson’s Hospital School,” it reads.

“Does Bishop Pat Storey believe in the teaching of her own Church? Why is she silent on the incarceration of Enoch Burke?”

An accompanying video shows Martina Burke heckling the archbishop about her son and Storey asking members of the Burke family to stop filming her and to stop blocking her from walking away. The post was shared more than 200 times on Facebook.

Josiah Burke also paid more than €400 for another sponsored post which showed Church of Ireland leaders being heckled at an event in Enniskillen in April.   

Burke again paid more than €400 for another post which showed Storey and religious leaders being heckled by the family while they picketed the Church of Ireland synod in Co Armagh in May.

Political figures

Josiah Burke has also paid hundreds for sponsored posts showing other political figures being heckled by his family over Enoch Burke’s case. 

In February, he paid Meta more then €500 for a sponsored post which showed a clip of Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman being heckled by members of his family over the ongoing imprisonment of Enoch Burke for contempt of court.

The incident occurred after O’Gorman attended an event to canvass for the Family and Care referendums in Galway, when the Minister was called a “disgusting disgrace” by members of the Burke family, who also criticised transgender people.

“Judges, sworn to uphold his constitutional rights, instead put an innocent man behind bars after he refused to surrender his Christian beliefs to radical transgender tyranny,” the caption on the post reads.

“The courts are now working hand in hand with the government to impose its ideology on the public. The constitution has been discarded by those sworn to uphold and defend it.”

Burke also paid more than €300 on a sponsored post which showed Minister for Education Norma Foley swiftly leaving an event at a school in Ballinrobe, Co Mayo last October after she was confronted by members of the family.

“Norma Foley’s salary + expenses come to €300,000. She is promoting transgenderism more than education, happy to remain silent while a teacher is locked in a cell in Mountjoy prison for his Christian beliefs,” part of the caption on the post read.

The video post has since been shared more than 500 times on Facebook.

Another sponsored post on Josiah Burke’s page from June of this year, which cost more than €500, shows Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly and other politicians being questioned by the family about Enoch Burke’s case.

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“None of these individuals had anything to say about an innocent man incarcerated indefinitely for not bending the knee to transgender ideology,” the post reads.

“The silence of these politicians, especially that of the Deputy First Minister, in the face of such egregious injustice is shameful.”

However, Josiah Burke has also paid for similar sponsored posts involving his other family members.  

In late June, he paid more than €1,000 for five ads about his sister Jemima Burke, who was convicted of a public order offence over her behaviour outside a coroner’s inquest in Mayo. Both posts were critical of the coroner in the case, Pat O’Connor.

The number of sponsored posts on Josiah Burke’s page is relatively high by the standards of political advertisers in Ireland.

According to figures on Meta’s ad library, around 90% of the almost 8,000 pages registered as political advertisers have run fewer than 100 political ads.

Figures show that Burke paid for the 139 ads on his own page, while he has also paid more than €700 for another eight ads on other pages associated with his family.

The number of ads paid for by Burke could theoretically be even higher, as advertisers are only required to disclosure their expenditure for on sponsored posts about social issues, elections and politics.