The Battle of Ideas Festival took place in Dublin on Saturday, with hundreds of people gathering for an afternoon of public debate on a number of crucial issues of the day.
There were a total of five sessions on various topics, ranging from mental health and overdiagnosis, to narrative control and gender ideology. The event, organised by the UK-based Academy of Ideas, and hosted by Gript, was completely sold out, with 400 people packing into the venue at the RDS.
One afternoon session sought to answer whether gender ideology had become Ireland’s new religion. This session heard how gender ideology remains embedded in policymaking across Europe, focusing on how Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act was among the first to permit full self-ID without medical evaluation, allowing legal documents to be changed for a €20 fee.
GENDER IDEOLOGY: IRELAND’S NEW RELIGION?
The audience heard how dissent in Ireland is often silenced, despite countries like Hungary reaffirming biological reality in law. Marion Calder (director of For Women Scotland) Stella O’Malley (psychotherapist), Prof Gerard Casey (professor emeritus of philosophy at University College Dublin), and Presidential candidate Maria Steen were on the panel and took questions from the audience. Several people said they appreciated having the opportunity to debate such issues in public.
“Why does the State continue to treat gender ideology as sacred truth – and what does this mean for free speech, education and public reason?” was one question asked.
Psychotherapist and author Stella O’Malley said that certain opinions had become “sacred beliefs” in Ireland, including that “trans women are women” and that “women can have penises.”
“You’re either in the community or outside of the community,” O’Malley said. “There are heretics – those are people like myself – and then there are apostates, who disbelieve, such as the detransitioners. We have all the elements of a religion when you go through it in detail.”
Ms O’Malley said that the issue was not just about ideas, but about the “rituals” of the trans movement, under which “great harms are being done.”
“When you look at the rituals that are taking place under the banner of trans ideology, the rituals and rights of passage to do with being trans are having an untold impact on people,” O’Malley added. She pointed to breast binding, something which she said is leading to mastectomies. “Then you have puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones which you can buy online. It’s very exciting because there is this feeling – as in rites of passage – that you are going through different stages of change, which is very alluring to someone who is very unhappy.”
“If you go through these stages of change, transformation will happen. It’s almost like a huge, transcendent experience, and it is targeting very, very vulnerable people who are often autistic and often same-sex attracted. It is leading them down a garden path that tells them that they can become the opposite sex.”
O’Malley said she believes that the ideology “does have the framework of a religion.”
“The Irish media have really embarrassed themselves [on this topic],” she said, to cheers from the audience.
Maria Steen, barrister and architect, told the debate that as individual rights and freedom are limited in the context that they affect other people, as she challenged the idea that “in order to be progressive, you have to agree with everything.”
“The atmosphere that is drummed up by the media is that, ‘This is great, we’re escaping the shackles of the Catholic church which was so oppressive about everything.’ I was a child in the 1980s and I was very involved in the Church,” Ms Steen said.
“I always have been. It never felt oppressive to me. I don’t want to, in any way, denigrate the experience of people who really did suffer, with individuals and with the hierarchy that ignored their problems. But I think to concentrate only on that, and to not see the other things that were good about the Church, and were good about society at that time, is wrong. We’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water, with the media eager to jump onboard with that narrative.”
Ms Steen challenged the idea that “in order to be progressive, you have to agree with everything.”
She said that the reality is that our rights are limited, as we live in a society where our very existence affects other people.
“When our freedom starts impacting other people, we have to say, ‘Wait a second. We have to measure this.’
OVER-DIAGNOSIS? MENTAL HEALTH’S EXPANDING EMPIRE
The first afternoon session heard that the language of illness is steadily replacing the language of ordinary hardship, seeing emotions like sadness become “depression.”
Psychiatrist Professor Patricia Casey told the panel: “I believe it is a depressive illness. I believe it exists. I believe bipolar disorder exists. I believe schizophrenia exists; I believe autism and ADHD exist as well, and I believe that these benefit from medication.”
The psychiatrists said that she sometimes refers patients to psychological therapy, as well as to psychotherapists to help them.
“But, and there is a big but,” Prof Casey said. “In recent years, I have noticed a huge change in the numbers of people coming wondering if they have got specific diagnoses. Nobody comes looking for a diagnosis of schizophrenia, and with very good reason. But believe it or not, there are some people who actually want a diagnosis of bipolar disorder.”
“One of the attractions of bipolar disorder for people is that it is linked to genius and creativity. People want to be creative, and they think a diagnosis of bipolar disorder will imply that they are therefore creative, but unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. It is not a one to one diagnosis.”
Prof Casey said that while the numbers of people wanting a diagnosis of bipolar disorder had fallen, she now sees in her work a high number of patients seeking a diagnosis of ADHD or autism spectrum disorder.
She told the panel that 49 per cent of young people in Ireland in the past year, in a study from 2024, had seen either a psychiatrist, a GP, or a therapist, half of whom had seen a therapist.
“We’re living in a therapy culture,” she said.
Felice Basboll, a student from Trinity College Dublin, said that there were all sorts of initiatives directed towards welfare, where everything had become “guided towards how you feel and making you feel better.”
“This has changed the way assessments are done. You have fewer and fewer exams, and more and more diverse kinds of assessments, and continuous assessment. Multiple choice questions, so that people aren’t faced with difficult and high-intensity situations where they might fail.”
Ms Basboll said that her experience as a student in Ireland showed her that many young people are living in a diagnostic culture.
“Even things like autism become more of a shorthand for awkwardness, with or without a diagnosis,” she said.
Young people, she said, are supposed to change between the ages of 15 and 25, and this is a time when it’s important to be challenged for the benefit of personal development.
“We’re supposed to have uncomfortable experiences,” she said, adding that a therapy culture and a culture which increasingly focuses on feelings and diagnoses “rolls things back for personal development.”
Some audience members agreed that a lack of resilience had become a key issue in society, particularly for young people.
IMMIGRATION, INTEGRATION AND CULTURAL COHESION
Immigration, Integration and Cultural Cohesion were discussed at an afternoon panel which heard from Ada Akpala, Cormac Lucey, Fatima Gunning, and Cllr Linda de Courcey.
This panel talked at length about how Ireland has shifted from emigration to mass immigration in a single generation, but without a declared integration model.
Economist Cormac Lucey told this panel how Ireland has been “living through unprecedented population growth.”
“When we look at immigration in Ireland, the single biggest fact dominating the entire debate is that between 1990 and 2023, Ireland’s population grew by over 50 per cent. That is double as fast as the next fastest-growing EU State, which was Spain – the retirement destination of choice for wealthy north Europeans.
“We have been living through unprecedented population growth mainly as a consequence of integration. And there has been very little public debate on this, even though this is a huge change in its own right. And even though it has added very significantly to the knock-on problems in the housing areas, where high levels of immigration, coupled with low levels of house construction, equals a very severe housing problem.”
Mr Lucey said that the Irish political establishment have shown a “resistance and a reluctance” to have a debate on the issue of immigration. He said he believes that many people in positions of authority feel their own outlook is morally superior, and that “other views and lifestyles should not be heard or encouraged.”
“This explains the BBC’s issues on Trump,” said Lucey, adding: “It explains how RTE manages news treatment on a lot of issues.”
Writer and commentator on race and identity in modern society, Ada Akpala. Ms Akpala migrated to the UK nearly 30 years ago.
“I consider it home, not just in a physical sense, but also in heart. This is why I care and why I talk a lot about these issues. In recent years, I have watched a growing strain on social cohesion, on trust, and on that shared sense of direction that is supposed to hold a society together.”
“Many societies are now changing so quickly that many societies can no longer make sense of what is happening around them.”
Ms Akpala said things in Britain and elsewhere in the West had gone past the stage of an identity crisis, and had entered something “closer to an existential crisis.”
“An existential crisis is about survival, and whether society can continue to exist in a way that still feels stable and recognisable for the people that live in it.”
She said that looking on from the UK, Ireland’s situation is not only challenging, “but actually quite alarming.”
“The country is undergoing and has undergone a demographic change at a pace that would strain even the most resilient and prepared nation. And yet, the response from many of its leaders that I have seen has been a little bit of denial and a little bit of dismissal.”
Amid the four sessions, a debate took place on the Return of Patriotism (Democratic Strain or National Renewal?) where John McGuirk and Niamh Ui Bhriain of Gript went head to head.
Ui Bhriain argued that a confident national identity still belongs in public life, and that a revival of national feeling can signal democratic renewal. McGuirk, on the other hand, said that citizens should look more to the broader international picture.
NARRATIVE CONTROL, MEDIA AND MISINFORMATION
The final session of the day focused on Narrative Control, Media, Misinformation and the Fight for Truth. Veteran Irish Daily Mirror journalist, Larissa Nolan, was joined on this panel by Sarah Ryan and Laura Perrins of Gript, along with British journalist Dominic Green.
The panel discussed Ireland’s new Counter Disinformation Strategy and the potential descent from open contest to the policing of public narratives.
The panel asked whether journalism risks becoming enforcement for the State rather than scrutiny – questioning whether the goal is to stop lies, or to delegitimise dissent.
Barrister and co-host of The Week That Really Was podcast, Sarah Ryan, said that people are continuously being presented with the idea that young, white males need training to make them “human, compassionate, or to even have basic decency.”
“I have two sons and a daughter. I’m worried about them all and how they will face this society in Ireland. But these portrayals which highlight criminality, emotional dysfunction and create a societal presumption that young men must be fixed is a huge problem,” she said.
She urged parents in Ireland to “stand against the powerful current that seeks to define your sons in a negative way.”
“Men are not intrinsically evil,” she added. “All men are not bad. Don’t let them say it; don’t let them reframe the narrative.”
Veteran journalist Larissa Nolan expressed concern that journalism had gone from being a trade to an elite profession where those involved were detached from the ordinary people.
Ms Nolan said that a main question remained how to ensure that power is not abused in the context of the “policing of truth.”
“Truth is the essence of reality – so this question is a profound a vital one, more than ever. Whoever controls the truth controls the world, and this is more relevant now than ever, particularly than in 1996, when I started in journalism and when media at least strove to be an impartial place.
“It was one that championed free speech and rewarded challenges to orthodoxy. But now it frequently calls for restrictions on what you can say and what you can’t say. It punishes those who go against the consensus or ask the ‘wrong’ questions.”
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