Another year has come and gone, another 12 months of Gript pressing Ministers and officials on everything from national security and immigration, to the very definitions of reality and “truth.”
Here are my top eight most memorable press exchanges from 2025.
1. The Ruth Coppinger Exchange
In one of the most interesting moments of the year, far-Left People Before Profit TD Ruth Coppinger flatly refused to answer a benign question from Gript, causing all hell to break loose.
Several other members of the press pool, who rarely agree with Gript’s editorial line, stood up for the principle that politicians do not get to hand-pick which journalists they answer to, comparing Coppinger to Donald Trump, and causing the party to be embroiled in a public clash with the media for several days.
2. Simon Harris and the Randi Gladstone Case
This exchange took weeks to get a straight answer. I first asked the Tánaiste Simon Harris – who was also then the Foreign Affairs Minister – about the case of Randi Gladstone.
Gladstone is a Guyanese national with 19 convictions in the UK – including for rape and kidnapping – who was allowed into Ireland, where he went on to falsely imprison an 18-year-old girl in Dublin within days of arriving in the country.
When I asked him how this happened, Harris initially said he wasn’t familiar with the case.
Several weeks later, I asked him again, and he still hadn’t looked into it.
Finally, on the third attempt, he explained that the man had entered on a holiday visa and hadn’t been flagged to authorities.
3. Jerry Buttimer: State-Funded Activism
Should the taxpayer be footing the bill for partisan activist groups? I clashed with Charities Minister Jerry Buttimer on the State’s continued funding of NGOs that often appear to operate as political lobbyists rather than neutral service providers which was, I think, enlightening.
4. Darragh O’Brien’s “Back of the Envelope” Climate Fines
Both the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (IFAC) and the Climate Change Advisory Council – bodies set up specifically to advise the State – have warned that Ireland could face staggering fines of up to €28 billion if 2030 EU climate targets are missed.
When I put this to Climate Minister Darragh O’Brien, he dismissed the figures as “back of the envelope stuff.” It was a remarkably flippant response to what his own experts believe could be a potential catastrophe running into the tens of billions, like the Apple money but in reverse. We’ll be holding onto that clip for the years to come to see how his prediction panned out.
5. Patrick O’Donovan on “Mal-information”
In a revealing admission, Communications Minister Patrick O’Donovan confirmed to me that the Government is interested in combating “mal-information”, explaining that this is information that is factually true but deemed “harmful.” This marks a massive leap from censoring “misinformation” to regulating the truth itself. It raises significant, unresolved questions for Government in my view.
6. Heather Humphreys: A Return to Common Sense?
On the Presidential campaign trail, I asked Heather Humphreys a question that has become a litmus test in modern politics: “What is a woman?”
She gave the biological answer – an adult human female.
Perhaps more significant than the answer itself was the lack of a media scandal following it. It serves as an interesting indicator of where the cultural needle has moved in 2025 compared to the height of the culture wars a few years ago.
7. Drew Harris and Garda Recruitment in IPAS Centres
During a press briefing with then-Garda Commissioner Drew Harris, I asked about the fact that Gardaí were holding recruitment sessions specifically within IPAS centres, which I discovered through FOI.
Harris seemed genuinely shocked and confused, mistakenly asserting that asylum seekers could not join An Garda Síochána. He had to be publicly corrected by his own press officer in real-time.
It was pretty remarkable that the head of the police appeared completely out of the loop regarding his own organisation’s recruitment strategies.
8. Peter Burke and Ireland’s “Shocking” Amount of Regulators
In a moment of refreshing, if slightly alarming, honesty, Enterprise Minister Peter Burke admitted he was “shocked” by the sheer number of regulators currently operating in the State.
While discussing the urgent need to cut red tape to help Irish businesses, his admission highlighted just how bloated the administrative state has become, even in the opinion of those purportedly in charge of it.
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This is, of course, just a very small sample of the questions asked by Gript over the year If you’d like to help us continue doing more of this kind of work in 2026, please consider subscribing at gript.ie/membership.
Happy New Year!