Independent Senator Sharon Keogan has accused the government of spinning a story of national prosperity while saying that the media disproportionately focused on the demise of a small business owned by prominent critic Nick Delehanty.
Speaking in the Seanad, Senator Keogan said that with the budget “just days away, we are witnessing a government establishment desperately trying to convince the public that Ireland is thriving.”
“But away from the spin and the smooth press conferences,” she said, “the reality on the ground for ordinary working people is one of absolute survival.”
Senator Keogan said “thousands of transport operators, agricultural contractors, and struggling citizens packed into a crisis meeting” in Moate, Co. Westmeath, on Sunday “to send a clear warning to this administration.”
“They are on the brink. They cannot sustain these crippling fuel costs,” she said. “If this upcoming budget does not immediately abolish the carbon tax and slash VAT on fuel, our roads will be gridlocked with protest once again.”
She pointed to government spending of “over 300 million on our EU presidency, only to have no influence at the table”, and said the establishment was made up of “out-of-touch ministers and high-ranking civil servants who happily burn millions on international vanity projects while local family businesses collapse at home.”
She added: “And then the subsidised mainstream press attacks anyone who dares to point it out.”
Media coverage of Nick Delehanty
Keogan criticised last week’s Irish Times coverage of the liquidation of Delehanty’s small dog daycare business. She said the coverage was not “out of sudden economic concern for small business, but in my view, as a highly targeted, disproportionate focus on a local independent figure like Nick Delahanty”, who she said had been a vocal critic of the government’s asylum and public spending policies.
“It is a disgrace,” she said, describing it as “an example of weaponising economic hardship” to silence dissent. She accused the media of being willing to “gleefully print a hit piece on a critic” while staying “utterly silent when the establishment’s own narrative is exposed as a total failure.”
Senator Keogan posed the question,”Where was the Irish Times, or indeed any mainstream media coverage of the explosive figures obtained from Dublin City Council by Councillor Gavin Pepper?”
She said his inquiry showed that “non-Irish households now make up 42% of the social housing waiting list” and that “the share of accepted social housing offers going to non-Irish households was 33%.” She said the council “admits it doesn’t even monitor allocation outcomes by nationality.”
“We have generations of Irish children locked out of their own communities, living in box rooms with their parents, unable to start families,” she said, accusing the press of “a coordinated blackout”. “This is a two-tier Ireland. Our own citizens are left out in the cold while the political elite manage a decline they refuse to acknowledge.”
“The public has certainly had enough,” she concluded.