SINCE SUNDAY NIGHT, reports have swirled on social media suggesting that an Irish person passed away in a tent in Dublin over the weekend amid the coldest spell of weather in Ireland in twelve years.

In just two days, the claim has taken on various iterations, with those who are sharing it disagreeing on specific details.

Some suggest the person was a young girl, though others say it was a grown woman with four children; she has also been referred to as both ‘Janet’ and ‘Nicole’ by those sharing news of her death.

But many of those who are sharing the claim are agreeing on two things: that the media doesn’t care because it is failing to report the person’s death; and that the supposed person’s death is indicative of the unfair treatment Irish people are receiving in contrast to asylum seekers who are being housed in temporary accommodation.

However, there is currently no evidence that any such person passed away in a tent in Dublin this week.

The Journal contacted Gardaí, numerous homeless charities, local activists in the area where the person’s death is said to have occurred, and the Dublin Regional Homeless Executive (who are helping coordinate outreach to people on the streets across the cold snap).

None of them could confirm that anyone whose details matched the various claims passed away in a tent in Dublin over the weekend.

The group who originally shared the claim have since removed the post containing it from their Facebook page, saying that they are still seeking to verify it.

Tragedies like this have been seen before within the current accommodation crisis, making the rumour believable. In this instance, however, it fortunately doesn’t appear to be the true.

Despite this, posts on Irish social media pages featuring the claim have been shared thousands of times on Facebook and Twitter, and the rumour has even made it as far as the Dáil.

The claim is also the subject of posts in channels associated with conspiracy theorists and far-right groups on the messaging app Telegram.

Many of the social media posts about the claim seen by The Journal have attempted to use the alleged death to criticise Ireland’s policy towards refugees and have questioned why there have been no media reports about it. 

The claim first emerged on Sunday afternoon on the Facebook page of a Dublin-based homeless outreach group, A Lending Hand, which is run by volunteer Keira Gill.

In an interview with the Press Association in 2019, Gill suggested that the homelessness crisis felt like “social cleansing”.

“A young girl has lost her life in a tent in Dublin,” a since-deleted version of the post read, accompanied by an emoji of the Irish tricolour and a claim that the story would not be covered by “mainstream media”. 

It also said that the woman “took her chances in a tent and never made it through the night”, implying that the person who died as a result of cold weather on a night when temperatures hit -1.5 degrees Celsius in Dublin.

A second version of the post shared on Sunday night further claimed the woman’s name was Nicole, and that the the original post on Sunday afternoon was deleted because of a “mix up” – which may partly explain the confusion around the supposed person’s name.

(Others point out that those calling the woman ‘Janet’ are mistakenly referring to a mother-of-four who was tragically found dead in a tent in Dublin in October 2020.)

The post had more than 10,000 interactions, and was shared over 4,000 times before being deleted on Monday evening.

Before it was deleted, The Journal contacted the administrator of A Lending Hand and emailed Gill asking for details about the person who died and whether the group had more details.

Despite the second post from Sunday night – which explicitly named the person who they reported to have died as ‘Nicole’ – remaining live until Tuesday evening, the group stated that they had still not ascertained the identity of the individual they were alleging was deceased. 

“We don’t have any more information I’m trying to get her name at the min [minute],” a response on Facebook said. No email response was received from Gill.

Far-right groups 

Minutes after appearing on the group’s Facebook page on Sunday night, a version of the claim was repeated by the former radio and television presenter Gareth O’Callaghan, who regularly posts about social issues and homelessness.

In a longer post about the takeover of Apollo House in Dublin by homeless activists five years ago, he wrote:

A young Clondalkin teenage girl, aged 15, died in a tent this week, in this freezing cold weather, all alone in an empty field.

Back in the Apollo House times, she was probably only making her Confirmation. She was a child. She died because no one cared. But you would still prefer to steer clear of working class areas, because you don’t get any votes there? Shameful. That’s what you all are. A young teenager who froze to death on your watch.

O’Callaghan’s post has since been shared hundreds of times on Facebook, though it was first shared at a time when it was less clear that there were doubts about the authenticity of the original claim.

O’Callaghan later told The Journal that there was confusion over the death of the individual involved but suggested it should still put a focus on the impact of the homeless crisis.

“Personally I believe there is a huge amount of very volatile and emotional unease about the Government’s utter lack of regard in this whole area, which creates an enormous ripple effect on social media platforms,” he said.

“I think this is possibly what’s causing actively concerned supporters of those who are homeless to react so quickly to any such news.

“While I am relieved that a 16-year-old teenager did not die in such extreme circumstances, if any empathy can come out of a shocking news piece that now appears to have been incorrect, it’s that it focuses more badly needed public attention, more immediately, on the homelessness crisis facing families with young children, which is now worse than it ever has been before.”

Within hours of the posts by A Lending Hand and O’Callaghan, the claim began circulating on social media and in Telegram channels among far-right groups and conspiracy theorists.

On Facebook, it was further shared by Yellow Vest Ireland before later being covered by the right-wing news website The Liberal.ie, which took aim at asylum seekers in the article containing the news.

“Meanwhile, the government has done all it can to move thousands of migrants into accommodation – people who for the most part have absolutely no connection to Ireland whatsoever – they’re being housed and our own are literally dying on the streets,” the article says.

“The charity [A Lending Hand] posted on Facebook that you will not see this on mainstream media – the reason being that it doesn’t suit their narrative of pushing endless numbers of migrants into accommodation while Irish people perish and die sleeping homeless in the freezing cold weather.”

Groups on Telegram also reported that a minute’s silence was held for the supposedly deceased woman on Monday night at a protest against a refugee accommodation centre in Clondalkin.

A message which was re-shared in numerous groups featured an image of individuals at the demonstration with protest signs, including one reading “Refugees given more rights than Irish homeless”.  

Another version of the claim appeared on Instagram earlier today, which contains an image reporting the death of a mother-of-four in a tent and attributing the news to The Journal. However, The Journal has not published any stories containing this news in recent days.

The story about the woman was also covered later on Monday by RSVP Live (a subsidiary of the Irish Mirror group), before being re-syndicated on Monday by the Irish Mirror and Dublin Live (also an Irish Mirror subsidiary), and reported separately by Her.ie.

These outlets have since removed the story from their websites, though the URLs were still visible on Google at the time of publication, giving the story a certain legitimacy to anyone who is searching for details of it.

Some individuals have continued to tweet links to stories on legitimate news websites hours after they were removed hours after they were taken offline, with one person who did so incorrectly suggesting to another that the story was “all over the media”.

In a new post on Tuesday evening, Yellow Vest Ireland posted about the claim again on Facebook (saying this time that a 15-year-old girl had died), citing reports in the Irish Mirror. Within an hour, that post had been liked and shared over 1,000 times.

By Tuesday evening, the story had made its way into Leinster House, where it was raised in the Dáil by Sinn Féin’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin.

“Over the last two days, we are reading newspaper reports of a young woman who was rough sleeping in my own constituency in Clondalkin, who has tragically died at the weekend,” he said.

“And the question has to be asked [...] why is this happening?”

Removed post

Around the same time Ó Broin was talking about the claim, A Lending Hand had taken to Facebook again to say the page’s admins had removed the post “about the girl who passed away” – though they attempted to distance themselves from responsibility for the claim.

“Because the people who told us could not confirm it, we took the word and confirmation from an other organisation, we have people on the ground trying to find out if it is true or not, we will keep you all updated,” the post said.

The group also apologised for any confusion and upset caused, and said its intention was merely to spread awareness.

In light of this, Ó Broin subsequently clarified his remarks in the Dáil chamber.

“As the Minister knows, the issue of the deaths of people experiencing homelessness is one I’ve been raising on a regular basis with him, and I’ve always argued the need for accurate and and up-to-date information,” he said.

“So I just want to put on the record of the Dáil that the story has reported in some sections of the media has not been confirmed. And actually, I desperately hope that the story is not true. And I want to just make that very clear today.”

He added that it was important to treat such matters with “great accuracy” and urged anyone with more information, if the claim was true, to bring it to Gardaí so they could investigate.

The claim emerged at a time when far-right groups and conspiracy communities in Ireland are seeking to exploit issues around the accommodation of refugees for political gain, following protests against asylum centres around the country in recent weeks.

Over the past few weeks, far-right individuals have taken videos of themselves protesting in Killarney, Wicklow town and East Wall in Dublin city centre, where speakers have decried Irish immigration policy.

All of this is occurring as the government struggles to deal with a chronic shortage of accommodation options for people coming from Ukraine, as well as those from other countries seeking safety and refuge, in high numbers.

However, this situation is not unique to Ireland: the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) reported last month that false narratives and disinformation targeting refugees has been on the rise across the continent recently.

Many of these claims suggest that refugees seeking asylum in European countries receive favourable treatment from authorities in the countries they enter. 

And although a claim about the homeless girl is not directly about refugees, it has been used to further an agenda whose narrative falls into that category.

Of course, it is difficult to definitively say a death like this did not happen but there is currently no evidence to support the claim it did. In fact, all indications suggest there is little truth to it.

And despite the deletion of the original post which sparked the narrative that a girl or woman died in a tent in Dublin last week, its traces may linger for some time.

Contains reporting by Diarmuid Pepper.