“Misinformation and disinformation – this is something that I know across government we take extraordinarily seriously,” Taoiseach Simon Harris said at a press briefing this week, when he was asked by a journalist about the terrifying rise of the “far-right”.
This was said with such firmness and confidence, that one would almost forget that it was being said by the same government that tried to ram through a Constitutional change based on a campaign of verifiable falsehoods just a few months ago. But some of us haven’t forgotten.
"How is this government in a position to lecture anyone on misinformation?": Ben Scallan challenges Taoiseach Simon Harris and Roderic O'Gorman on the government's "non-stop misinformation", particularly in the run up to the Family and Care referendums. pic.twitter.com/5hUeBqzhP7
— gript (@griptmedia) August 26, 2024
Some of us remember well how, just four days before the Family and Care referendums, on Newstalk’s ‘The Hard Shoulder’, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar adamantly insisted to the public that concerns around the referendum’s potential impact on immigration were a “red herring” – i.e. he implied that immigration was a completely nonsensical non-sequitur that has nothing to do with the vote at hand.
However, as we now know thanks to FOI’d documents sought by Gript’s Gary Kavanagh and then subsequently The Irish Times several months later, this was not the opinion of senior Department of Justice officials.
In fact, senior officials privately believed that amending Article 41 of the Constitution to include non-marital families, as the Government was suggesting, would have undermined (or even outright destroyed) the State’s ability to operate a functioning immigration system. One email read: “The State has been able to maintain an immigration system so far precisely because Article 41 is applied to a small, tightly-defined group of people. The State will not be able to regulate immigration if this protection is applied any more widely.”
So in other words, mere days before voters went to the polls, the Taoiseach of the country was telling the public that a ‘Yes’ vote would have no impact whatsoever on immigration. And meanwhile, behind-the-scenes, senior Department of Justice officials were warning the government that the complete 180-degree opposite was true.
And yet, when I put this very obvious contradiction to Taoiseach Simon Harris this week, and asked him if this constituted an example of the “misinformation” that he is so quick to condemn, he argued that it wasn’t. He said it was just an innocent case of a group of civil servants giving their fallible opinions on an issue, which Government was free to take or leave as they saw fit:
“Yes, people can give advice to government on various proposals and various drafts. But ultimately then the final decisions on government and wording and the likes is a matter for government.”
Of course, this is absolutely true; civil servants are not in charge of the country, and they’re not always right in the advice that they give. But that does nothing to address the substance of the point I had raised.
The point here is not “Civil servants are omniscient gods, and their views about legal matters are always correct”. Obviously that’s not true.
The point is that Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, and other senior government figures, were saying that immigration concerns were a daft “red-herring” – i.e. a bizarre distraction that clearly has nothing to do with the referendum. And meanwhile, they knew full well that credible senior officials within the Department of Justice were deeply concerned about it as an issue.
Even if Varadkar and the rest of the government believed that those officials were wrong, it was absolutely misleading of him to imply that this was some insane, off-the-wall view that had come out of thin air, when he was fully aware that serious and knowledgeable people with relevant experience thought otherwise. The off-hand dismissal of such a perspective as if it was absurd, when he knew it wasn’t, was clearly tantamount to misinformation.
Moreover, at the same press briefing, Equality Minister Roderic O’Gorman went on to try and minimise the significance of what the officials had said, by claiming that “an official in the Department of Justice had a view, but ultimately we follow the legal advice of the office of the Attorney-General.”
By saying “an official” in the Department held this view, the Minister was implying that this was just one person’s opinion. In reality, numerous entire units within the Department expressed this view, including the International Protection Office, the VISA Unit, and more. So ironically, there was actually misinformation contained within O’Gorman’s answer about misinformation.
Meanwhile, several days before the referendum, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar also said that the idea of “durable relationships” is one that “already exist in European law – that’s the reason we chose it.”
However, Minister Roderic O’Gorman had already said beforehand that the government definition of “durable” is “not influenced by the EU law definition” and has a “different meaning.”
The Taoiseach says the idea of "durable relationships" is one that “already exist in European law - that’s the reason we chose it.”
— Ben Scallan 🇮🇪 (@Ben_Scallan) March 6, 2024
But O'Gorman previously said the government definition of "durable" is "not influenced by the EU law definition" and has a "different meaning." pic.twitter.com/ScyfqbtjDw
When I pressed O’Gorman on this point, however, and tried to establish whether Varadkar had spread misinformation, O’Gorman flatly refused to answer, simply repeating in a robotic fashion that the Attorney-General had said the EU law definition and the Irish Constitution definition of “durable” were not the same.
While this might seem like a nitpick or harping on a minor point, it isn’t – it’s actually hugely consequential. Here’s why:
As most readers will recall, one of the biggest concerns during the referendum was that the phrase ‘durable relationship’ was so vague and nebulous that it would create legal chaos if enacted in law, because there was no way to know how the courts would interpret it. And so, in an effort to counter this concern just days before the referendum, then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar publicly insisted multiple times that the term “durable relationship” already exists in European law, so its meaning is already clearly understood and has legal history to it – it’s not some vague, random phrase that the government just pulled out of thin air.
But Roderic O’Gorman (who has a PhD in European Law) had already confirmed previously that the definition of “durable relationship” that the government were using was not at all related to the EU definition, and had a totally different meaning.
And so, presented with these facts, you have to believe one of two things. Either: 1) The Taoiseach and/or the Equality Minister didn’t know why they had chosen the wording for a proposed Constitutional change, which would be shockingly incompetent; or 2) They both did know why they had chosen that wording, but one or both of them were misleading the public. There is no third option. Each man’s statement was a mutually-exclusive contradiction, and at least one of them had to either be mistaken about something extremely basic and important, or lying.
In addition to this, Taoiseach Simon Harris went on to say that there was a “vast difference” between what the government did during the referendum, and misinformation that leads to riots:
“I do think there is a a vast difference between political debate and arguing the points in relation to your view on policy in a referendum campaign or an election campaign, and misinformation, disinformation and hatred that has led to, as you know, very serious scenes of disorder unrest attacks on Gardaí, attacks on police forces, and others.”
Of course it’s incredibly convenient that when the government misleads the public openly about a referendum, it’s just “political debate” and “arguing the point” – but when other people do it, it’s “misinformation” and an “attack on democracy”. If you didn’t know better, you’d almost think there was a double standard at play.
But that’s neither here nor there.
As it happens, I actually agree with the Taoiseach that there’s a ‘vast difference’ between the government’s referendum claims, and misinformation that leads to riots. What the government did was much worse, and would have damaged society far more than any riot. After all, just imagine what would have happened if they had successfully snuck through a constitutional change based on verifiable falsehoods, only for the public to find out en masse after their votes had been cast and it was too late.
While both things are obviously bad and unacceptable, riots can easily be put down with a few water cannons and swift prison sentences. What the government tried to do – namely, force through a change to the Constitution based on false pretences – would have been nearly irreversible, and could potentially have done vastly more harm to society in the long-run. If the top civil servants at the Department of Justice are to be believed, it could have annihilated our immigration system completely, not to mention a whole host of other potential problems around tax law and inheritance law, and a variety of other important areas of life, as outlined by senior legal experts like former Attorney-General Michael McDowell.
So in terms of net damage to democracy, trust in our institutions, and our society at large, the government’s offence here was actually much more egregious than some eejit on Telegram egging on a riot. The damage that a random thug would cause would be bad, but localised and short-lived. The damage politicians nearly caused would have been widespread, and would likely have had a cascading effect that spanned multiple generations and become a permanent fixture in our highest legal document.
And all of this is before we get to Media Minister Catherine Martin falsely claiming that the Constitution says “a woman’s place is in the home,” which it most certainly does not. And then, after she was rebuked by a Supreme Court Judge from the government’s own misinformation watchdog for this, she arrogantly refused to retract or correct the misinformation she had posted and doubled down.
Media Minister Catherine Martin is asked if she will delete a tweet in which she falsely claimed that the Constitution says "a woman's place is in the home" - a claim which was explicitly contradicted by her government's own Electoral Commission.
— gript (@griptmedia) February 19, 2024
Question by @Ben_Scallan. pic.twitter.com/Ya0WF0zXZs
Then, when I tried to ask Leo Varadkar to account for this the following day, he brazenly walked off stage mid-sentence and refused to engage.
IGNORED: Taoiseach Leo Varadkar walks out of a press briefing as @Ben_Scallan is mid-sentence asking about government ministers spreading referendum misinformation. pic.twitter.com/rXNivixJut
— gript (@griptmedia) February 20, 2024
And when I subsequently asked Tánaiste Micheál Martin about it, he refused to condemn it or describe it as “misinformation”, despite the fact that it clearly objectively meets the textbook definition.
Tánaiste Micheál Martin denies that Catherine Martin's "women in the home" claim was an example of "misinformation," saying that describing it as such was a "complete over-the-top reaction." Question by @Ben_Scallan. pic.twitter.com/3trED5IQwU
— gript (@griptmedia) March 5, 2024
What we have here is clearly a government that feels it can knowingly or unknowingly make any number of false statements – even ones that may dupe the public into making fundamental changes to our constitution – and refuse to be held accountable for any of it. But then at the same time, they want to go around appointing themselves the arbiters of truth itself, and condemning perceived “misinformation” as if they themselves are squeaky clean of it.
Politicians have utterly squandered their credibility when it comes to this issue, and they haven’t got a leg to stand on.