POSTS ON SOCIAL media have incorrectly claimed that an incident which left a man in critical condition in Mullingar last weekend was an attack carried out by asylum seekers.

There is no evidence that this is the case, and two teenagers arrested in connection with the incident are Irish citizens. They have no connection with the International Protection system.

The injured man, aged in his 30s, was discovered at around 1.10am on Saturday morning on Grove Street, Mullingar, Co Westmeath.

One post on social media, which also mentions another crime that is under investigation, claims that the Mullingar incident was “allegedly carried out by Non-Irish Nationals.”

“IF you’re Irish and badly assaulted by Non-Irish, YOU DONT EVEN GET A MENTION,” [sic] the 16 December post on Facebook ends, complaining about a lack of news coverage.

However, this characterisation is wrong. The news was covered by the media, including by The Journal, and there is no reason to think the Mullingar case involved non-Irish people assaulting an Irish person.

The first results when searching for the term “Mullingar” on X show a post claiming that the incident was an attack by “2 Muslims”, but there is no evidence that the arrested Irish teenagers were Muslim.

That post has been shared more than 4,200 times and seen more than 505,000 times.

Many of the other top search results on X include the same claim, as well as the additional false claim that the victim had died.

Many of the accounts sharing these claims on Facebook and X had previously posted explicitly far-right material, including claims that migrants were committing crimes in Ireland.

Gardaí arrested two teenagers, both aged 17, this morning as part of their investigation into the circumstances surrounding the injured man in Mullingar.

The man remains in a critical condition, Gardaí said in a statement.

Gardaí expressed concern about misinformation and disinformation in relation to the case.

This year, The Journal has debunked claims that most prisoners in Ireland are foreign nationals; that a non-Irish couple tried to snatch a child from its mother’s hands in Cork City; that a video of a man smashing up screens at an airport was a non-Irish person in Dublin Airport; that a “black man” tried to drag a child from their bike in Dundalk; and that a man charged with firearms offences in Dublin City was not Irish.

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