Mary Hunt

[gript @griptmedia]

Coimisiún na Méan gave €4.4m in taxpayer money to media outlets to cover approved stories, including a series on the role of migrant workers in Irish agriculture:

https://t.co/QOjy9imzeG

[gript @griptmedia]

MATT TREACY EXCLUSIVE: Persons who are issued with a deportation order do not have their PPS number cancelled the Department has admitted.

https://t.co/NDlq3w5Ga7

[Nick Delehanty 🇮🇪 @Nick_Delehanty]

Irish Govt are planning tougher citizenship requirements.

This is good news, but

Are they going far enough?
Will it be enforced ?
How long will it take to be enacted?

Proposed new rules:

*Residency: potentially 8 years
*English-language requirement
*Must be financially self-sufficient

*Must have employment
*Must have accommodation
*Must be able to support family

*Tougher “good character” test
*Deeper criminal/background checks
*Repeat offending could disqualify

[Big Mickey Mackin🇮🇪❤️🇺🇸 @PeterClear328]

Micheál Martin spent €70,000 on canapés and wine on 1 July while telling dying Irish children the medicine is too expensive.
€11,750 on high-end canapés.
€8,600 on drinks.
€45–€47 a bottle.
Skyclarys — a drug that could slow a progressive disease for around 200 Irish people?
Too expensive.
Hundreds of millions for foreign governments and international protection?
No problem.
The State can always find money for the canapés.
It just can’t find it for its own people.
Irish lives are negotiable.
Everything else is urgent.
#TwoTierIreland #IrelandFirst #Ireland

[Niall Boylan @Niall_Boylan]

I want to quickly address why some people are asking why we are not streaming the show on X every weekday at 12pm. We are.
The problem is that @elonmusk and X have deboosted our account over the past few months, leaving us with almost no visibility, despite the fact that we pay for Premium Plus. Incredibly, we had better visibility before we started paying! Some people are promoted the show but most are not.
This also applies to our daily tweets and in particular those around certain topics or if they happen to link to our show.
This appears to be affecting EU users more than those anywhere else because of the EU Digital Services Act and the interference of our own regulator.
Meanwhile, those on the left and liberals do not appear to face the same restrictions because they promote the approved “popular opinion” on immigration, multiculturalism, climate change, gender ideology and other contentious issues.
The ultimate irony is that many people will never even see this post. The algorithm will detect certain words, restrict its reach and bury it. So much for free speech on X.
Below is groks explanation on analysis of our account.

[gript @griptmedia]

A Senator has argued that the public is legally and morally entitled to a transparent database detailing the chief executive salaries and board members of every NGO in receipt of state funds:

https://t.co/v3eFTIe2sC

[Declan Ganley @declanganley]

In my home County of Galway. That poor girl.
The two accused rapists needed and got, an Arabic interpreter.
Silence is hard. This is our home.

https://t.co/jfBnCDXrsZ

[Geert Vanden Bossche @GVDBossche]

Finally! Finally! Finally!
Over the last few decades scientific publications have increasingly degenerated into little more than a vehicle for intellectual self-gratification, personal fame and financial sponsorship. Countless institutions, both of authors and peer reviewers, are thoroughly contaminated by conflicts of interest. During the C-19 pandemic, I demolished several papers in my own field that had been waved through by peer-reviewed journals despite their biased and misleading conclusions. My disgust for this publication-obsessed establishment reached a peak roughly a decade ago when I read that incredibly deceitful article on the results of an Ebola vaccine published by WHO authors in The Lancet (https://t.co/RnzAzUn78u).
It is long overdue to put an end to the farce of having publications judged by a cozy little clique of scientists who oftentimes belong to the same elitist mainstream establishment as the editors themselves and who only care about their own interests rather than any genuine service to science or to the public. The vast majority of these peer-reviewed articles contribute precisely zero of value to such noble goals and that is not even counting the papers in fundamental science, whose usefulness I do certainly acknowledge.
It is an absolute disgrace that this same elite continues to feast greedily on taxpayer money while society does barely get anything useful back on its investment.

[Cllr Linda de Courcy MSc. 🇮🇪 @LindadeCourcy]

Data from FOIs has revealed that in Fingal, 25.5% of people on the waiting list for a house are non-nationals, yet they are receieving 35.5% of housing allocations.
In other words, a non-national is 1.4 times MORE likely to get a house or apartment than an Irish person in @Fingalcoco.
Think about that for a few minutes...it made me pretty angry to see the data in black and white!!
The other Dublin councils have not released the data, but it is safe to assume the situation is similar, I have a question into @sdublincoco about this and will let you know when I get a response.
You can download the report here https://t.co/l8h1rW4AbK
@independent_ire

[Mary Hunt @MaryHun32225536]

@aak1880 What i would like to see is the full debate not clips from either side. Has the full debate being released?

[gript @griptmedia]

More than 26,000 people have arrived into Ireland with false or no passports, the new data showed.

Deputy Nolan said: “These numbers make it alarmingly clear that Ireland is still seen as an asylum money-magnet for chancers and imposters".

https://t.co/0eVqXcNd9T

[Bret Weinstein @BretWeinstein]

Watch to the end.

[Mandy Gall @TheMandyGall]

Their media trainers have them well taught to keep circling back to the 'reaction on the day' and the mothers 'extraordinary forgiveness'...WE WANT TO TALK ABOUT THE CRIME OMG!!!

[gript @griptmedia]

A TD has said that the conviction of Parnell Square stabber Riad Bouchaker raises questions about Irish citizenship, arguing applicants should integrate into society, speak the language and not remain dependent on social welfare for decades.

Read more: https://t.co/Fy6sj0uvXE

[Peadar Tóibín TD @Toibin1]

Sinn Féin voted against their own Cost of Living amendment in the Dáil this week.

It took Aontú to explain their mistake and save their blushes.

[Louise McKenna @_louise__]

The deeper I go into old Irish government records, the more I realise that most of us were never taught how this country was actually run.

I grew up thinking the State was simply a government. Politicians got elected, departments carried out policy, and private businesses operated separately. That is the picture most people still carry in their heads today.

Then I started reading books like this.

What I found was something completely different.

Page after page describes companies, corporations, boards, authorities, holding companies and financial bodies that were either created by the State, funded by the State, owned by the State, controlled by the State, or all four at the same time.

The Minister for Finance appears everywhere.

He owns shares.

He appoints directors.

He guarantees loans.

He advances money.

He receives dividends.

He controls the companies.

At some point I had to stop and ask myself a simple question.

If the State owns the shares, appoints the directors, provides the money, guarantees the debts and receives the profits, where exactly is the separation between government and corporation?

The answer is that there often wasn't one.

What these records reveal is that much of Ireland was being administered through corporate structures.

The fishing industry.

The tourism industry.

The dairy industry.

The sugar industry.

Agricultural credit.

Industrial credit.

Shipping.

Insurance.

Steel.

Even seaweed processing.

Again and again you see the same formula.

A company is created.

The Minister takes the shares.

The Minister appoints the directors.

Public money is injected.

Loans are guaranteed.

The operation expands.

Then over time it simply becomes part of the landscape and people forget it was ever created in the first place.

That is what struck me most.

Not that these organisations existed.

Not even that they were legal.

What struck me was how few people know they existed at all.

We spend our lives arguing about politicians while barely looking at the structures beneath them.

Governments come and go.

Parties come and go.

Ministers come and go.

But boards remain.

Authorities remain.

Corporations remain.

Administrative systems remain.

The machine keeps operating regardless of who sits in the Dáil.

Reading these records feels like lifting the bonnet of a car for the first time.

Most people spend their lives looking at the paintwork.

The elections.

The speeches.

The headlines.

The scandals.

These documents show you the engine.

And once you see it, it becomes very difficult to unsee.

You begin to realise that Ireland did not simply build a government after independence.

It built an administrative corporate state.

A vast network of corporations, boards, agencies, statutory bodies and financial structures which sat between the people and the assets of the nation.

That does not automatically mean there was a conspiracy.

It does not automatically mean there was criminality.

But it does mean that the story we were taught was incomplete.

Very incomplete.

The deeper lesson is that power rarely looks the way people imagine it looks.

Most people think power is a politician standing at a podium.

These documents suggest that real power often resides in whoever controls the shares, appoints the directors, guarantees the debt, controls the assets and writes the rules under which everyone else operates.

That is the part of Irish history I never learned in school.

And I suspect most people never did either.

Ireland is a corporation and it trades in humans.

[BigData Boutique @BigdataBoutique]

ClickHouse Power Tips - Too Many Parts, Schema Optimizations, Query Analytics, When to Partition, Understanding MergeTree, Monitoring, and more. Check out our blog series!

[Aontú @AontuIE]

Ireland, not the EU should decide what supplements we can purchase.

Petition: https://t.co/l7pasdPekB

#aontú #saveoursupplements

[Independent Ireland @independent_ire]

Micheál Martin Is Ignoring His Own TDs and Ignoring the Irish People on the Triple Lock – Michael Collins TD

Independent Ireland Leader Michael Collins TD has accused Taoiseach Micheál Martin of riding roughshod over both his own parliamentary party and the Irish people as the Government presses ahead with plans to dismantle the Triple Lock mechanism without a referendum.

Deputy Collins was speaking following reports that approximately 20 Fianna Fáil TDs signed a letter expressing concerns about changes to the Triple Lock and calling for its retention.

"It is an extraordinary situation when a Taoiseach is not only refusing to listen to the Irish people, but is also ignoring the clearly expressed concerns of his own backbench TDs," said Deputy Collins.

"We now know that around 20 Fianna Fáil TDs felt strongly enough about this issue to sign a letter calling for the Triple Lock to be retained. Yet their concerns have been brushed aside. If Micheál Martin won't listen to members of his own parliamentary party, what chance has the ordinary citizen of being heard?"

Deputy Collins said the Government's refusal to hold a referendum demonstrates a lack of confidence in public support for its plans.

"The reality is that the Government knows the Irish people would reject any further erosion of our neutrality and sovereignty if given the opportunity to vote on it. That is why they are refusing to put the question to the people."

"The Triple Lock has long been viewed as an important safeguard in relation to the deployment of Irish troops overseas. Whether people support reforming it or not, there is no question that such a significant change deserves public consultation and democratic consent."

Deputy Collins said the proposed changes form part of a broader pattern of decision-making that is increasingly removing important powers and protections without meaningful public engagement.

"First we had the EU Migration Pact pushed through despite widespread public concerns. Now we have another major change touching on neutrality and sovereignty being forced through without a referendum. The pattern is becoming clear."

"The Government talks endlessly about democratic participation, but when it comes to issues that matter, it seems determined to avoid asking the people for their opinion."

The Independent Ireland leader warned that public trust in politics is being undermined by a growing perception that decisions are being made behind closed doors while legitimate concerns are dismissed.

"The Irish people are not children. They are perfectly capable of deciding important questions about the future direction of their country."

"Micheál Martin is ignoring his own TDs because he knows many of them reflect the views of the people they represent. Instead of listening, he is pressing ahead regardless."

"If the Government believes these changes are necessary, then it should have the courage to put its case to the Irish people in a referendum. Anything less will be viewed as an attempt to sidestep democracy."

Photo: Irish Times

@MichaelC_IND_TD @kenoflynnTD @RichardODonoghu @ciaranmullooly