A FAKE SCREENSHOT of what appears to be an RTÉ article about the National Children’s Hospital has been shared on X and Facebook, pushing the false claim that asylum seekers will be accommodated on the site.
The image, which is in the style of an RTÉ News article, carries the headline: “Children’s Hospital re-purposed to house asylum seekers.”
No such headline and no such story appeared on the RTÉ News website on 3 July, the date given on the image.
The text below the headline reads: “Up to 50% of the National Children’s Hospital (NCH) is expected to be repurposed to house new arrivals to Ireland seeking international protection. The decision comes as government told it must accept higher numbers of International Asylum Applicants.”
There are a number of other things about the style and word choice that make it suspicious at first glance.
A Google search for articles with that headline on RTÉ does not show any piece with that information on the broadcaster’s website.
The choice of tense in the headline appears strange, given that the National Children’s Hospital has not opened yet. So a real headline would likely say “to be repurposed”.
Moving from the headline to the fake article’s text, there are more obvious issues.
The font used is not that normally seen on RTÉ News articles.
Additionally, the spelling of repurposed changes between the headline and the text below. In the headline, the word is hyphenated while in the text, it is not. So “re-purposed” becomes “repurposed”.
The second line of text contains errors in the form of missing words. Where is should say “The Government has been told…” it says, “Government told…”.
Then in the same sentence, the term “International Asylum Applicants” is used.
This is not an official term. The author of this fake article was likely thinking of International Protection Applicants, a synonym for refugees, and an official designation that is often capitalised.
The fake screenshot has appeared in the last 24 hours on a Facebook page titled “Stand Up For Ireland”, which has around 6,600 followers.
A quick scroll through some of the content posted on the page shows that the account is a serial spreader of conspiracy theory driven falsehood, including anti-vaccine and 5G conspiracy content.
The image was posted earlier this year in July by an X (formerly Twitter) account with the name Annette and the handle @Ak83578774. It was seen more than 2,500 times on X and received 24 likes and 16 retweets, although a number of people commented on it expressing doubts over its authenticity.
The easiest way to check the authenticity of a news story, especially one that appears in an image and not on a website page, is to simply enter its text into a search engine.
Although in this case, as it purports to be an RTÉ article, all you need to do is check their website.
The Journal has previously debunked similar fabricated headlines, including ones supposedly published by RTÉ.
The Journal’s FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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