While I will enjoy my extra bank holiday in honour of St Brigid on Monday, I absolutely did not enjoy the ridiculous video released by the Department of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty awful, even by the standard we’ve come to expect from these productions.
I was quite happy to ignore our Government’s attempts to remind everyone that it has, at the taxpayer’s expense, recast St Brigid as the unwilling Saint of Woke. It’s now happening every year.
I’d hoped that February 1st would pass off without another yearly cringe-fest usurpation of a great Christian saint.
Maybe the communications teams in Government departments might have listened to the public who don’t seem to be that interested in their desire to recast St Brigid as a witchy abortionist? Will they take a break and give us all a day off from this tiresome nonsense this year, I thought to myself.
But it wasn’t to be, and seeing as the ad has now been viewed over 800,000 times on X alone, and people are becoming quite incensed about it (you can look at the Department being ratio’d in the comments) it’s worth your correspondent writing about it all over again this year.
As ever, we have the long list of St Brigid themed events plated out by Dublin City Council. They all, funnily enough, seem to yearly revolve around witchcraft and flower crowns and the new age and LGBT and inclusion.
I sighed when I read that ‘Brigit: Dublin City Celebrating Women 2026’ will return on Friday and run until Monday. It’s basically the Spring version of the Winter Lights fiasco. This is the fifth year of the St Brigid’s Day programme, which was founded in 2022 by the Lord Mayor’s Office, as the ‘Dublin City Celebrating Women’ event (name taken from the ancient Celtic goddess Brigid, not to be confused with the saint, they say). And quite honestly, I’m tired of it. Can someone please put us out of our misery?
Saints, goddesses and queens are all tangled together in the big, confusing, and quite honestly, jarring programme.
Lord Mayor of Dublin, Ray McAdam, commented: “It’s a great privilege to mark the fifth year of Brigit: Dublin City Celebrating Women. “Just as the goddess Brigit was known for her many gifts – from poetry and healing to smithcraft and wisdom – this festival has grown into something truly special for our city, encompassing so many different ways to celebrate women’s achievements. This is our chance to recognise the incredible contributions women have made throughout Irish history and continue to make today.”
Ok, so we are having the Bank Holiday to celebrate St. Brigid’s Day, but it’s not actually about the Saint. It’s about a mythical goddess who had nothing to do with the traditional celebrations of the saint who lived and established a community in Kildare and was revered in Ireland. Just so we understand that point.
Now onto the video advertisement from the Department of Foreign Affairs. When you think this Government is tired of rage-baiting, they always prove they have it in them to come back for more.
To break it down for the reader, the video shows the triumphant celebrations from abortion activists at Dublin Castle after Repeal the Eighth. (Ah yes, remember when the politicians said there would be no celebrations?)
That, I can only imagine, is to reinforce the lie that St Brigid was an abortionist. I mean, she was a consecrated virgin who gave her life to Jesus and spread Christianity, and there’s no real basis for the despicable claim, but this is the vision of St Brigid and Ireland the Department wants to sell to the world.
“St Brigid was an activist, healer and peacemaker,” the ad declares. “Inspiring women who turned compassion into power. It lit the torch of a movement.”
Not only was this the abortion movement, according to the Government department, but apparently St Brigid, as some pink haired, flower power liberal icon, has inspired every progressive cause under the sun.
Archive footage included in the ad shows a woman holding up a sign: “No Banning Family Planning.” You also have an individual waving a rainbow flag, beaming with a Marriage Equality sticker.
It appears to hint at transgenderism too, because you have a very masculine looking individual dancing around in all-black, with some spiel about “feminine power.” It must be a man, I thought, clicking back to replay the ad. I mean, doesn’t that just sum up how this Government feels about Irish women?
Lest we forget how our Government tried to remove Constitutional protection for mothers, holding a referendum to do so on International Women’s Day of all days. That was their way of celebrating and thanking women.
Oh, and how could I forget about the very deliberate moment when the ad cuts to a shot of Ailbhe Smyth, the so-called feminist veteran who led Repeal and now gets worked up about “transphobic hate speech” anytime anybody points out women don’t have male genitalia, or should have their own safe spaces.
You’ve got to love the logic here – let’s make an advert about how great women are, and promote all the usual suspects who are entirely unable to define what a woman is.
The very people who want men like Graham Linehan to pay with his career for standing up for real women. It’s ridiculous, and I’m glad people aren’t buying it.
The problem at the heart of all of this, I think, is that a major government department doesn’t care about what its own citizens think. It’s giving them the middle finger, in fact. It is completely clear from the video that it was intended to cause annoyance, even anger.
This is not just a county council or some arts body going rogue – it’s the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade; The Department tasked with the responsibility to represent and promote Ireland on the world stage.
Their job is to make us look good to everyone else. And what does it come up with (with our cash)? A video deliberately made to antagonise people of faith by deliberately ignoring the real story of St Brigid – and punching down on the hundreds of thousands of women who opposed Repeal, because only the right sort of woman is ever celebrated in progressive but definitely not inclusive Ireland.
There isn’t one hint of St Brigid’s Christianity in that video. But you’ve got your fair share of far-left activists. You’ve got gloating abortion campaigners. You’ve even got women in black cloaks holding lanterns like they’re in the Traitors. I assume they’re meant to play the role of sexy witches, smouldering to the camera. It’s so ridiculous.
The maddening thing is that we are paying for this rubbish with our wallets. And those in the Department responsible for this tripe, I assume, sit back and grin smugly while people get annoyed?
They are promoting a distorted, warped vision of both our patron saint and of Ireland. One where our patron Saint supports abortion and every woman has purple hair and a nose-ring like their fictional version of St Brigid. I do think people should say they’ve finally had enough.
The Advertising Standards Authority requires that advertisements avoid causing offence on religious grounds. So how did this qualify?
The activist framing is all so boring and so blatant. And it actually makes Ireland look anything but attractive. Those looking on, without a doubt, must feel sorry for us having to endure yet more one-sided, performative, taxpayer funded indoctrination.