TIKTOK COMEDIAN GARRON Noone thanked his supporters as he made his return to TikTok this evening following an online storm stemming from a video he had posted addressing immigration in Ireland.

Noone, a popular TikTok personality, had posted a short video on the platform last week in which he replied to requests from his followers to speak on his personal views regarding Conor McGregor’s visit to the White House.

In his White House appearance, McGregor said that the government “has long since abandoned the voices of the people of Ireland”.

“Our money is being spent on overseas issues that has nothing to do with the Irish people. The illegal immigration racket is running ravage on the country. There are rural towns in Ireland that have been overrun in one swoop, that have become a minority in one swoop,” he said.

• You can read The Journal‘s Factcheck on Conor McGregor’s claims here.

McGregor’s presence in the White House on St Patrick’s Day was met with backlash, due to a jury recently finding him liable of the sexual assault of Dublin woman Nikita Hand.

In his short video in response, Noone said that he didn’t think McGregor was a “good person”, but said he wasn’t surprised to see that people were agreeing with what he had to say.

“There absolutely is an immigration issue in Ireland,” Noone said. He added that it didn’t mean that he believed Ireland shouldn’t take in refugees or allow people seeking “better opportunities” to take up residence in the country.

Noone made several other comments about various elements of Irish society, such as its economic standing and his belief that towns and cities are becoming more unsafe.

In the wake of his posting of the video, Noone was inundated with both criticism and support. He deactivated his online accounts as he received backlash from large numbers of people online. 

Many public figures weighed in on the matter. Noone received support from TD Peadar Tóibín, Sinn Féin TDs David Cullinane and Pádraig Mac Lochlainn, as well as internet personalities, both in Ireland and abroad.

In his video marking his return this evening, Noone said that he was in no way “anti-immigration”, and thanked people that had disagreed with him “in good faith”.

“The last thing I want to do is paint people out who disagreed with what I said, or even people who disagreed that I should have said it. The last thing I want to do is paint those people in a negative light,” he said. He added that people “should be able to have conversations about these things” and it is “tremendously valuable”.

Noone said that he was taking accountability, and that a number of his points made in his initial video were “too vague” and “open to interpretation” – “it’s clear to me from the people that did, enough people did misinterpret it that it’s clear to me that I definitely could have communicated it better, and that is 100% on me, and I absolutely should be held accountable for that.

“I have a very large platform, and the things I say get out to a lot of people, and if they’re poorly communicated, people absolutely should criticise me now, and they should criticise me in the future for that.

“I’m sure some of you seen some of the far right people who were misappropriating what I was saying and trying to use it to bolster their own agenda, which was obviously absolutely horrifying to me, and the last thing that I would want.

“Though, I do think some of the assertions people were making that I was a far right poster boy, or that they were all behind me – I think that was really overblown and kind of a hysterical reaction.”

In discussions online following McGregor’s White House visit, the figures of reported crime rate in Ireland, particularly within Dublin, featured widely. While crime figures have dropped in recent years according to data from the Central Statistics Office, Noone said: “What I said is that the towns and the cities are becoming much less safe, and I believe that to be true. Some people were quoting CSO statistics and saying that crime has gone down, and many types of crime have gone down. Some types of crime have risen slightly.

“That’s not the primary thing that that I’m thinking about, though there’s a lot of anti-social behaviour being unaddressed, there’s a lot of problems with drugs. The types of drugs have changed. There’s many, many factors to why people feel things are getting much more unsafe.”

Noone spoke about several other elements of his original video he felt had been misinterpreted in the days that have followed its posting online, and concluded that he would be returning to his usual content.

You can watch his full video here.

Need more clarity and context on how migration is being discussed in Ireland? Check out our new FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.