OVER THE NEXT two years, Irish citizens will cast their votes on at least four different occasions as the country goes to the polls for local, European, national and presidential elections.
The political landscape has changed considerably since the last national election in 2020, which was held weeks before the start of the Covid pandemic; issues like the cost of living and immigration now feature higher in polls asking voters about their concerns than they did four years ago.
Ireland has never elected a politician from a far-right party, with the best-performing candidate in the 2020 general election getting just 2% of first-preference votes.
The movement has become a lot more high-profile since then: the Covid pandemic gave far-right parties and personalities a lot more publicity through their involvement with the anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine movements.
The ongoing fallout over immigration in the past year has brought their views even further into mainstream political discussions, as potential candidates see a pathway towards election by capitalising on local concerns and the spread of misinformation.
Ahead of the busy voting period, a number of new parties have registered with Ireland’s newly formed Electoral Commission and now appear on the official Registrar of Political Parties.
Three of them in particular have leaned into anti-immigrant and anti-government sentiment over the past 12 months, with their members and social media channels regularly sharing misinformation and conspiracy theories online.
Ireland First registered as a political party last year, after social media channels with its name and logo were set up in early January on foot of anti-immigrant protests in East Wall and Drimnagh in Dublin and Fermoy in Cork.
The party has around 1,400 followers on Facebook, more than 3,000 followers on X (formerly Twitter), and fewer than 300 subscribers on the messaging app Telegram.
The homepage of its website describes the party as “centre-right nationalist” in outlook, though its listed policies align with other far-right parties, including in other countries.
These include “immediate revocation of citizenship and mandatory deportation” for foreign nationals convicted of crimes, that “discussions on gender identity or [transgender] topics should not be pushed onto children”, and for Ireland to leave the EU.
The party also says it is “against unnecessary [Covid] lockdowns”, that it is “dedicated to combating destructive climate change policies” and that it is anti-abortion and that it wishes to hold another referendum on the issue.
Ireland First’s channel on the messaging app Telegram also include examples of what the Irish Times last year described as ”overt racism, homophobia, anti-semitism and sometimes calls for violence” (though it also said there was no evidence of such views being sanctioned by the party’s leadership).
The party’s social media pages also share far-right talking points.
Posts on various platform regularly target immigrants, asylum seekers, members of the LGBTQIA community, sitting TDs from both Government and opposition parties, and businesses which provide services to asylum seekers.
“We have a huge problem here in Ireland. Those that we elected and pay handsomely to represent and protect us have a deep seated hatred for us,” the party’s official page on X posted about a Social Democrats TD and a Labour TD earlier this week.
Another post by the party about protests against refugee accommodation in Ballinrobe earlier this month described the asylum system as “a massive psyop [psychological operation"] and called the accommodation a “plantation centre” - a phrase that invokes the ‘Great Plantation’, an Irish-specific version of the Great Replacement Theory.
According to its website, members of Ireland First include its president Derek Blighe, vice president Margaret “Alacoque” Maguire, secretary Sarah Herraty, chairman Tommy Murphy (who is Blighe’s brother) and treasurer Declan O’Malley.
Blighe is a Cork-based far right social media personality who also bills himself as a ‘citizen journalist’. Originally from Ireland, he previously emigrated to Canada to work in the construction industry before returning here, where he has gained prominence by appearing regularly at anti-immigrant protests over the past 15 months.
He has almost 6,000 subscribers to his personal channel on the messaging app Telegram and has been fact-checked by The Journal on multiple occasions over the past year for his incorrect or misleading claims about migrants.
He regularly travels around the country to places where asylum seekers are living and where protests against them are happening.
He has referred to direct provision centres as “plantations” and has wrongly linked asylum seekers to cases of rape and sexual assault.
Blighe has also claimed falsely that the war in Ukraine is a scam, and that refugees are arriving in Ireland under false pretenses, often referring to them as “illegal fakeugees”.
In a post on X after protests outside Racket Hall in Roscrea earlier this month, he called for women and children seeking asylum in Ireland to be deported.
Last year, he appeared in court charged with theft of a t-shirt from a hub for Ukrainian refugees.
Other members of Ireland First include Philip Dwyer, a former National Party candidate who has appeared in court on multiple occasions (including for kicking a dog while he was a postal worker), and Blighe’s brother Tommy Murphy, who appeared at an anti-trans protest outside Cork library last year and who has been convicted for burglary and drugs offences.
Earlier this week, Blighe posted on X that the party would not be running candidates in the upcoming European elections and that it would instead endorse its “partners” in the far-right Irish Freedom Party: Hermann Kelly, Michael Leahy and Diarmaid Ó Conaráin.
The background and purpose of The Irish People, another registered party, is a little less clear.
In a post on Telegram, the party stated that it wants 160 candidates to run in June and its website says it is seeking expressions of interest to run under its banner (though it seems they will continue as independent candidates if elected, suggesting that it is more of a grouping than a political party).
“By running under a common brand, logo, and shared principles, our aim is to increase [our candidates'] electoral chances, starting with the Local and European elections next year,” it says.
“Rather than being bound by a strict party line, our members are encouraged to act, speak, and vote according to their own convictions once elected.”
It adds that it is seeking to establish “a real opposition” – a reference to conspiracy theories and far-right political beliefs that current opposition parties are either in cahoots with the Government or are not properly representing the will of Irish citizens.
The Irish People’s social media presence is not as prominent as other parties: at the time of writing, it has just 17 followers on Facebook, 34 followers on Instagram, 75 followers on X, and 9 subscribers to its Telegram channel.
However, the ‘about’ section of its website indicates its far-right talking credentials by echoing the movement’s talking points.
It contains views that are anti-immigrant (“Government immigration policies have moved heaven and earth to house those arriving while our own people are being made homeless or hopeless”), anti-trans (“extremist agendas have led to open borders policies, sexualisation and confusion of our kids via gender ideology”), and conspiracy theories about the Irish establishment (“government policies and mainstream media have been captured by extremist NGOs and are now pushing extreme globalist agendas”).
“Ireland is not alone, this is happening in most countries in Europe and across the western World,” the website reads.
“Be clear, no one is coming to save us, our only chance is to save ourselves and in doing so fulfilling our historical role in saving European civilisation as Irish Monks did during the last dark age.”
At present it is unclear who if anyone will stand for The Irish People, but the Electoral Commission’s register lists three authorising officers for the party: David O’Reilly, Anthony Cahill and Jacinta Gibbons.
O’Reilly is a known far-right personality in the west of Ireland, who regularly shares far-right content on social media.
He previously stood for election in Galway East in 2020, when he said he was opposed to same-sex marriage, abortion, and “multi-cultural supremacy and mass migration”, and described climate change as a hoax.
A 2-hour discussion on X Spaces to introduce the party, featuring O’Reilly and another unnamed party member (who it was said “had to stay under the radar for a while”), described The Irish People as “a new party of independents” earlier this month.
During the discussion, the unnamed party member claimed to have interest from foreign nationals to stand for The Irish People, suggesting that it showed the party was not anti-immigrant, before they expressed anti-immigrant views.
“What’s happened to the Irish people is such an injustice, it’s such a slur. Basically our nation is being deconstructed [...] from every angle,” he said.
He also talked about a child being taught “queer theory” and “gender theory”.
“Children are being taught nonsense [...] it’s not education, it’s indoctrination. All these angles; it’s an attack on the children.”
The party member also mentioned far-right personalities Andy Heasman and Ross Lahive, who led a series anti-trans protests at libraries across the country last year against LGBT-friendly books being made available to children to read, as well as Enoch Burke.
“They brought that stuff right to the fore, and when nobody wanted to know about that stuff, they were at it; now the worm has turned on that.”
Meanwhile, The Farmers’ Alliance, which formally registered earlier this month but which does not yet appear on the Electoral Register (which was last updated on 18 December), does not appear like a far-right party at first glance.
The party grew out of a Facebook page set up by Donegal farmer Liam McLoughlin who claimed last year that “hundreds of farmers” contacted him after becoming frustrated by issues within the sector.
It has around 4,400 followers on Facebook, more than 6,000 followers on X, and just over 2,500 followers on TikTok, while there are around 250 subscribers to its Telegram channel.
It appears to be influenced by similar movements abroad, most notably the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement (or BBB locally) which is led by Caroline van der Plas, the daughter of an Irish emigrant.
The BBB gained huge traction in the Netherlands after capitalising on protests against plans by former Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s to cut nitrogen emissions culling livestock numbers and potentially closing farms.
Those protests garnered significant global attention and the movement gained international support, including from Donald Trump and other far-right figures.
Shortly after The Farmers’ Alliance formed as a group, Van der Plas addressed one of its meetings and urged its members to form a political party and contest in elections.
Similar moves were discussed by serving independent TDs last year, when they likewise considered creating a new party aimed at rural voters, though none of those TDs appear to be involved with The Farmers’ Alliance.
“I see big similarities between us [and the BBB],” McLaughlin was quoted as saying in Agriland last year.
“The only difference in us and the BBB, [is that] they were built out of protesting and here we’re skipping the protesting. We don’t believe in protesting. We’ve been protesting for 50 years and we have achieved nothing.”
Tapping into the same issues identified by the BBB and those TDs, the Farmers’ Alliance’s website also focuses on rural issues, promising “real change for farmers, rural communities and consumers”, and it does not outwardly contain any of the imagery or symbolism of Ireland’s other far-right parties.
Beneath that, however, it focuses on issues that would appeal to far-right voters.
In a section on its immigration policies, the party claims that Ireland has “an open borders policy” that is attractive to asylum seekers and “economic migrants” who want to avail of “free housing”, and that government policies on immigration “jeopardise the safety of our people” – points that feature regularly in far-right discussions on the subject.
The party’s website also takes aim at the Government’s proposed hate speech legislation, the European Union, NGOs and the World Health Organisation, all of which are frequent targets of the far-right movement here.
The Farmers’ Alliance social media pages also regularly feature its views on these issues.
Last week, it shared a post on X claiming that proposed asylum seeker accommodation showed the Government’s “disdain for the Irish people” and another post which supported recent anti-immigrant protesters in Roscrea that also claimed, baselessly, that planned hate speech legislation could be used to quell protests.
“Around the country we see ordinary men and women who never protested before coming out to reclaim their communities from an increasingly desperate rogue government, who have now turned the full force of the law on the people,” the party said.
“Seeing the riot squad rolled out and attacking the people of Roscrea today was a shock to us all.
“We fear it could be an increasingly common sight as this desperate regime tries to maintain power and ram their disastrous EU immigration policy through against the will of the people.”
As is the case with The Irish People, it’s not entirely clear who will be standing for the Farmers’ Alliance in the upcoming elections, but the party says that it will announce its candidates soon.
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