Yesterday a very large march took place in Dublin city centre opposing the government’s disastrous immigration policy that is now a source of anger throughout the country, with ‘shanty towns’ (to quote an Taoiseach) growing in the capital, and thousands marching in small villages to voice their upset.
The mood of the public is reflected in the huge majority of voters who say they feel Ireland has taken in too many migrants, while, as the Irish Independent says, concern over immigration has “dramatically soared”. It is now a priority issue for voters – only behind housing as a top priority, and the two issues are, of course, inextricably linked.
Neither is the growing public concern simply a matter of numbers: there is a palpable sense of public outrage at the stories now breaking on almost a daily basis about the failure to deport failed asylum applicants; or the State’s inability to deal with asylum shopping and the horrendous consequences for women’s safety; or the blind eye that has been turned until very recently to the huge numbers of migrants pouring across the border to claim asylum in this jurisdiction.
In that context, you’d expect substantial media interest in yesterday’s march, and fair reporting and comment on the thousands that took part as evidenced by the many videos and photographs which captured the size and scale and energy of the crowd. Our cameraman pieced some of those together in this video, which shows the constant stream of people packing O’Connell Street yesterday: men and women, families with buggies, small children up on shoulders, dogs walking with the rest, tricolours everywhere.
Even when its shown at speed, the size of the crowd is significant – all the more so given that there wasn’t one taxpayer-funded NGO or political party, nor any trade union, involved in its organisation. Nor did the media give it any of the advance publicity they are generally eager to give to any cause which ticks the right boxes for the establishment and for trendy causes such as ‘Ireland for All’.
Those taking part in yesterday’s march were understandably annoyed then at the frankly risible reporting in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent on the numbers attending the demonstration. It is difficult to believe, to be honest, that the claims of ‘several hundred people’ in attendance were written with a straight face.
Jack White’s report for the Irish Times seemed wholly negative towards the march in general. There were ‘several hundred people’, he wrote in defiance of the evidence of his own eyes it seems, or maybe he’s just really, really bad at crowd-estimation, in which case he shouldn’t be making estimates in the first place.
He then suggests the crowd was so big that it took a long time to march through O’Connell Street – and disrupted traffic, presumably another black mark against them too. In the same piece, White says a small crowd of counter protesters numbered “about 200” – in other words, he claimed they were present in almost the same number as he allowed for the marchers, even though the match quite clearly dwarfed the counter protest in size.
It all feels silly and childish and petty and rather ridiculous, but its reflective of the fact that the Irish Times is sticking its head, ostrich-like, in the sand and refusing to believe, or even contemplate, that they have lost the room on this issue.
The Indo wasn’t much better, leading with the headline that an “anti-immigrant protest” was “attended by hundreds in Dublin”. The marchers would likely argue that they are not “anti-immigrant” but opposed to the shambolic and frankly dangerous immigration practises now operating in the country, but the Indo didn’t seem to have bothered to discuss the distinction with them.
Of course, it is always difficult to estimate crowd sizes, and numbers are always contested, but sometime estimations are so wildly off kilter with what people can see with their own eyes that it begs the question as to whether they are published out of wilful blindness or something amounting to spite.
Luckily for all concerned however, the media and their friends in the establishment have already decided a sure-fire, bullet-proof means of estimating crowd sizes that can be applied to all circumstances given that Gardaí now insist that marches of substantial sizes going through the city end at the same spot every time.
We could call it the Ireland-For-All-Spectacular-Crowd-Size-Estimator, or the Custom House Quay Calculator for short. It comes from that march which was hyped and welcomed and lavishly covered by the media in February 2023, and which featured all of their favourite people, like NWCI (waving the right sort of flags), and Le Chéile (featuring the usual suspects who front all the establishment-baked campaigns), and even Bernadette McAliskey (whose outfit got millions from a US billionaire to advocate for migrants in, eh, East Tyrone), and of course, Christy Moore, the ordinary man living in Monkstown, far, far from the land of migrant tents and trouble.
There were 50,000 in attendance on that occasion, Ireland for All said. It was only massive. Didn’t it pack Custom House Quay? And that was dutifully reported by the eager media and repeated ad nauseam in the days that followed.
Grand so. Let’s compare the Ireland for All march with yesterday’s rally. It was, after all occupying the same space.
Here’s footage from the Ireland for All gathering on the day, taken by journalist Alison O’Reilly. Some comments pointed out – and she agreed – that some of the crowd may have dispersed for the speeches, but that’s true for all marches. We can get a general sense.
Customs House now #IrelandForAll rally pic.twitter.com/9PgeE6evkW
— Alison O’Reilly (@AlisonMaryORE) February 18, 2023
Then there a photo taken by Hazel Chu the same day, which Gay Community News used in their report under a headline saying tens of thousands were in attendance – and that the organisers had claimed 50,000 were there “in opposition to the recent wave of anti-refugee protests that happened in the capital.”
You get the picture. If you fill that space, the media will agree you’ve had 50,000 in attendance. Yesterday, Gript reporter Fatima Gunning was present at the march opposing immigration from the start to the finish. She says the “misreporting of observable facts” by some of the media regarding crowd size is quite shocking.
Here’s her video from the protest yesterday at Custom House Quay – and some photos from the same vantage.
Looks comparable to the 2023 Ireland for All rally to me. The absurdity of the media’s claims, therefore, is contradicted, not just by the photographic and video evidence, but by contrasting the claims on crowd size with those previously made when they were favourably disposed towards the protest organisers.
On the left, the Ireland for All march of February 20th, 2023, reported by the Irish Times as including fifty thousand attendees.
On the right, the protest against Government immigration march of May 6th, 2024, reported by the Irish Times as including "several hundred people". pic.twitter.com/TkehYxLOV1
— John McGuirk (@john_mcguirk) May 6, 2024
Ireland’s for All’s estimate was 50,000. But their crowd size on Custom House Quay is comparable to the protest against immigration, whatever quibbles are made regarding timing and the density of crowds. How can the Irish Times report 50,000 for one crowd and “several hundred” for a directly comparable gathering?
Would it be too hard for the media to acknowledge that Christy and Le Chéile never really pulled 50,000 – but that the anti-immigration march did pull a very large crowd around the same size, but without all the establishment support? Probably.
Not that it matters much. People can see for themselves, thanks to X and You Tube, and a thousand phones set to video, how big the march was. But next time the Irish Times and the rest are bewailing the fall in media trust amongst ordinary people, they might remember that they are all too often the authors of their own downfall.