By D Collins for Irish Channel
The message from Ireland’s political establishment after the presidential election is loud and clear: sit down, hush up, and let us decide what is fit for you to hear. The same government that leaned on party whips to choke off council nominations is now scolding the public about “misinformation,” as if the real problem were unruly voters rather than a stitched-up ballot.
First, the facts that matter. Fine Gael issued a blanket instruction to its councillors to block independent presidential nominations at local authority level a hardball move that drastically narrowed the “four councils” pathway intended by the Constitution to keep the Áras open to citizens outside the party machines. That wasn’t whispered; it was reported in plain sight by RTÉ and The Irish Times.
In practice, that meant countless would-be candidates never even reached the starting line. Yes, parties are entitled to whip their members but doing so across the board to shut down nominations is a political choice with democratic consequences. It turns local councils from a pluralist safety-valve into a rubber stamp. Voters noticed; so did the ballot boxes. A surge of spoiled votes was widely read as a two-fingers protest at a ballot that looked designed by committees, not chosen by citizens. (National and international coverage highlighted record levels of invalid ballots and a public mood sour on the menu offered.)
Now enter the government’s preferred frame: misinformation. Minister Helen McEntee has repeatedly warned about falsehoods around elections and legislation, insisting there’s “a lot of misinformation” in circulation especially online. Nobody disputes that lies and deepfakes exist; several outlets tracked them in the campaign’s final days.
But here’s the rub: when the same political actors who narrowed the ballot pivot to lecturing the public about which narratives are legitimate, it stops sounding like civic hygiene and starts looking like gatekeeping. Critics said exactly this during the hate-speech bill debates: the State was blurring lines between tackling incitement and policing opinion, with vague definitions that risked handing government the role of final arbiter over what may be said. Those concerns are on the Dáil record and in the legislative back-and-forth.
Let’s be crystal: this is not an argument for misinformation it’s a warning about who gets to define it. When party headquarters can muzzle council nominations on Monday and then brand inconvenient criticism “misleading” on Tuesday, we’re drifting from a marketplace of ideas toward a ministry of truth. You don’t need to squint hard to see the Orwell shadows.
Three plain warnings to the electorate:
Don’t outsource your outrage. The establishment’s discomfort isn’t about fake posts it’s about a public that no longer defers. Spoiled votes were a blunt instrument, but the anger behind them is rational: voters wanted a real contest and saw party machines padlock the side door that used to let outsiders in.
Watch the vocabulary creep. “Misinformation,” “hate,” “harm,” “safety” these words matter in law. When their definitions are elastic, power stretches to fill the space. The hate-speech package has already been revised after sustained pushback, which tells you those concerns weren’t imaginary.
Defend the nomination routes. The Oireachtas-or-four-councils model only works if parties don’t strangle the councils. If national whips can nullify local autonomy at will, the constitutional safeguard is a fiction. That isn’t illegal but it is anti-pluralist.
Ireland just elected a President in a climate where choice was politically constrained and dissent was morally pathologised. If the governing parties want trust, they can start by restoring it where they broke it: stop whipping councils to block nominations and stop pretending that criticism equals misinformation. Until then, voters should treat every sermon about “truth” from the same podium that narrowed the ballot with the scepticism it has earned.
Democracy doesn’t die with a bang; it suffocates under procedure. Keep the windows open.