Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ How mass immigration is reshaping Ireland beneath the surface — Dr. Eoin Lenihan

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. What an interview today. Boy, I love this guy. His name is Dr. Owen Lanahan,

00:00:04.580 and he knows everything there is to know about Ireland, or more to the point,

00:00:08.440 the vandalizing of Ireland. In fact, that's the name of his book.

00:00:12.380 We'll go deep on it. The politics, the problems with the media in Ireland, and of course,

00:00:16.800 immigration, the number one issue in that country. What a show. And I want you to see it, 0.98

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00:00:32.140 video content, but you support Rebel News because we depend on that because we don't

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00:01:25.520 also use code TAMARA10, that's T-A-M-A-R-A 10, to save 10% off of your total purchase

00:01:34.340 at checkout. Now let's get into it. Tonight, anti-immigration politics had a huge win in

00:01:40.780 the United Kingdom last week. So what's next in Ireland? It's May 18th and this is the Ezra LeVance Show.

00:01:48.100 I love going over to Europe because I often say it's a dystopian time machine.

00:02:06.840 What I see happening in places like Marseille or Paris or London today, I think will happen in Canada in five years' time.

00:02:14.340 I'm talking about things like mass migration, censorship, things of that sort.

00:02:18.980 And recently, I've been fascinated by the case of Ireland, a rather small country, only about 5 million souls.

00:02:25.100 And until recently, a fairly economically poor country.

00:02:29.160 Now it's one of the richest around, huge surplus, big Western tech companies there.

00:02:34.040 It's certainly leading the way in some measures economically, but it's also leaping ahead in issues of mass immigration and censorship.

00:02:42.020 I've taken a real fondness to the island being there oh at least half a dozen times in the past

00:02:47.000 couple years watching a grassroots movement muster against mass immigration but there's no political

00:02:53.140 class that has responded to it in the way that say in the United Kingdom Nigel Farage has harnessed

00:02:58.960 the upset there I need help in understanding it I'm trying to learn about Ireland because I'm

00:03:05.560 curious about it because I love it and I love the people but also because I want to get lessons

00:03:09.320 for canada so who better to talk to than our guest today his name is owen lenahan he's the

00:03:15.080 author of vandalizing ireland which is a great name and that's what i want to talk about is this

00:03:21.100 wonderful emerald island being vandalized and can it be saved uh owen lenahan thanks for joining us

00:03:28.980 today yeah it's a pleasure to be on with you and just at the offset thank you for all you've done

00:03:35.160 actually for ireland you really helped raise the profile of the country and what's happening there

00:03:40.600 to an international audience so appreciate that thank you well it's it's been my pleasure i've

00:03:45.200 done it out of intellectual curiosity i really knew very little about ireland um the thing that

00:03:50.960 strikes me whenever i visit there is how friendly the people are and it makes me think a little bit

00:03:54.360 about our canadian province of newfoundland again a small uh fairly homogenous culture

00:04:00.940 a great gift of the gab i mean in ireland they have the larney stone i mean i think there's

00:04:05.960 there are some deep ties between canada and ireland but i don't want to be confused by the

00:04:10.780 myth or the history i want to understand what's going on now help me understand i don't get it

00:04:16.060 how ireland could have such wonderful people but have such an awful group of politicians maybe

00:04:21.540 every country says that but ireland feels especially cursed in the politics department

00:04:26.280 I think you're right. Our biggest problem is that our two big parties, Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael, they were birthed out of our revolutionary period. So they were pro the treaty which gave us our independence and anti. So Fianna Fáil were anti, Fianna Gael were pro.

00:04:43.460 Now, the problem is that once we got our, once we became a republic in the late 40s, we, they kind of ceased to have any major ideological and economic platform differences between them.

00:04:57.340 So we've had this unique charade whereby since the 1950s, we've had to pretend that they're different parties when in reality they aren't.

00:05:05.300 And I don't mean that flippantly.

00:05:06.760 So from the late, after the 1950s, we underwent economic crash.

00:05:12.560 There was a spike in immigration not seen since the famine.

00:05:18.760 And from the 1960s, both parties essentially came together and they devised an economic strategy based on going all in on the EU and all in on American, in particular, foreign direct investment.

00:05:32.020 So they started down this path together and they've stayed on this path together while giving the electorate the illusion of choice.

00:05:38.680 There was never really any there.

00:05:40.380 So what's happened now is that since the 1960s, the successive governments have abandoned domestic industrial growth in favor of the dopamine hit, the economic dopamine hit of American multinationals.

00:05:56.680 So you mentioned it there in your opening that we're kind of considered, you know, one of the richest nations in the world.

00:06:03.000 And we are on paper.

00:06:05.660 So the IMF recently just announced that Ireland will pass Luxembourg

00:06:10.900 as the richest country in Europe by 2030, and we'll have a GDP PPP,

00:06:15.020 so purchasing power parity, excuse me, of 168,000 euro per person.

00:06:22.720 So it makes us sound incredibly wealthy.

00:06:25.360 But GDP isn't a great measure at the best of times, as you know,

00:06:28.760 because it depends on how a government is going to ensure that that wealth trickles down.

00:06:32.920 But it particularly means little in Ireland because our GDP has been radically inflated and distorted by the huge investment in American multinationals in Ireland.

00:06:44.920 So, for example, in 2015 alone, when Apple and other major big tech industries onshored intellectual property to Ireland, we saw a GDP spike of 26 percent in one year, which was it's a record in post-World War II GDP increases.

00:07:03.840 So we have no, first of all, we have a distorted sense of how rich we actually are, as Paul Krugman put it, leprechaun economics.

00:07:11.620 But secondly, we seem uniquely cursed, as you said, by our political class and how this supposed vast wealth is spent.

00:07:19.840 So even though we're told on a daily basis that we're the richest nation in Europe, one of the richest on earth,

00:07:26.480 we have 40 percent of working young people under the age of 35 who live in their childhood bedroom.

00:07:32.980 They can't move out of home. Three out of five people under the age of 25, for example, plan to emigrate from Ireland.

00:07:42.600 Children who are waiting for vital scoliosis treatment can wait up to two years, despite numerous scandals, for treatment.

00:07:54.100 66% of people under 25 said they'd have a better life elsewhere.

00:07:57.620 We have the highest rate cost for energy in the EU.

00:08:02.560 We have the second highest cost of groceries and so on and so on.

00:08:07.080 Now, Ezra, I think you were there or at least rebels certainly reported on the recent haulier and farmer protests that happened in Ireland.

00:08:16.620 And this is becoming more and more visible.

00:08:20.120 Again, thanks in large part to your outlet.

00:08:22.620 But it gives people a sense of, while our government projects outwardly wealth, that there is this great disconnect with people who are feeling the bite at home.

00:08:33.340 So, for example, the hauliers, what they were protesting about in farmers recently in Ireland was that the government takes 50% tax roughly on petrol, over 50% and almost 60% on diesel.

00:08:47.200 Sorry, the other way around, 57% on petrol and 48% on diesel.

00:08:51.360 so again we have local businesses who on top of that will pay a 12.5 percent at least

00:08:58.800 VAT and other charges who are paying you know for exorbitant prices for electricity

00:09:04.260 for water charges etc etc we have local industry being strangled while our government

00:09:11.100 caters only to American multinationals now there's an issue with that increasingly since

00:09:17.920 the early 00s, that this multinational hiring has relied on foreign labor. Since 1995,

00:09:27.400 we've outstripped our domestic supply of labor, essentially. In the early 00s, we had a large

00:09:35.380 influx from Eastern Europe as the Eastern European bloc joined the EU. But since the 2010s,

00:09:43.920 what the influx of immigration now has been in service of big tech in particular.

00:09:51.320 Now, companies like Microsoft, Apple, and so on,

00:09:54.620 these are hiring now at a rate of in the 90th percentile non-EU workers, 0.70

00:10:00.740 chiefly Indians.

00:10:02.340 So this has an impact whereby it's twofold.

00:10:05.500 First of all, as you pointed out, Ireland now,

00:10:07.980 a tiny nation of 4 million ethnic Irish,

00:10:10.720 has 5 million people living in Ireland.

00:10:12.940 So that's a million people who have immigrated in the last 20 to 25 years, which has created a massive housing crisis, a massive housing bubble, which has led to that 40 percent of working young Irish under the age of 35 living at home.

00:10:26.100 But also this bringing in people, particularly from India, into the big tech sector, into upper echelon medical jobs has imported a non-Irish upper middle class, which has allowed them to purchase, block purchase housing in any housing estate that they like while native Irish are stuck at home dreaming of ever owning a house and knowing that it's an impossibility. 0.80

00:10:54.980 So the seeds have been set for massive, massive social strife due to just political failures compounded decade over decade. 0.75

00:11:08.020 But what it comes down to is the lack of any real choice in Irish politics.

00:11:13.300 Wow. Now you said so many interesting things there.

00:11:16.100 I didn't know that on paper Ireland was as rich as Luxembourg.

00:11:20.260 And in some ways I can see it here.

00:11:21.840 Let me play for you a clip.

00:11:22.760 But this is Howard Lutnick, the U.S. Commerce Secretary, talking about some of how American high-tech companies use the preferential tax status of Ireland to reduce their American tax burden.

00:11:38.760 Now, he's saying it in a slightly menacing way.

00:11:42.220 He says he wants to bring that money back to America and tax it.

00:11:44.920 But the reason I want to play this clip today is to try to explain that it's, like you say, it's not really a real economy.

00:11:53.520 I mean, there are real things happening in Ireland, but I think some of it feels like accounting tricks.

00:11:59.340 Let's go over what Apple does right now.

00:12:01.400 Here's a simple example.

00:12:02.700 They make the parts in China.

00:12:04.720 Yeah.

00:12:04.960 They put the parts together in Taiwan.

00:12:07.100 Then they wave their magic wand and it floats over Ireland.

00:12:12.080 Of course it floats over Ireland because that's where Apple does its products.

00:12:16.240 And then it comes to America and they make, I don't know, something like 3% profit in America.

00:12:21.020 They make corporate tax on 3% profit in America.

00:12:24.400 And Ireland announces a massive budget surplus for their 5 million people.

00:12:30.420 Ha, ha.

00:12:31.840 It's just not true.

00:12:33.000 So the concept is, have them pay their taxes in America, and that is how you fix America.

00:12:39.360 So that's a little bit of tough talk.

00:12:41.600 I don't think that either Secretary Lutnik or President Trump have acted on that.

00:12:46.080 I think they have a fondness towards Ireland.

00:12:49.200 But I'm just trying to explain how you can have that much wealth on paper.

00:12:54.320 But when I was in Ireland a few months ago, I met a fireman.

00:12:57.560 So this guy is, he's working full time, frankly, in a government job.

00:13:02.060 and he said he can't afford a house. He just can't afford one. And what strikes me whenever

00:13:08.980 I'm in Ireland, especially Dublin, is how many migrants there are. There's this beautiful new

00:13:14.760 boardwalk built along the canal or the river in Dublin. And 100% of the people on it, I literally

00:13:22.580 went through and spoke to every single person on the boardwalk. I made a video out of it.

00:13:27.320 every single one of them is foreign and and some are there in good faith and and happy and they

00:13:34.460 love ireland but others are there it feels like some sort of ngo project let's talk about that

00:13:40.420 for a moment we've talked about the economic changes in ireland which i half understand

00:13:45.520 but one thing that i think i do understand is the mass immigration being hustled into ireland of all

00:13:52.260 places by ngos can you talk a bit about that because i know that that goes to your book

00:13:56.580 vandalizing Ireland. There's so many NGOs in Ireland, it's almost hard to believe.

00:14:03.680 I've heard a stat of 50,000. Is that accurate?

00:14:07.240 They say around 36,000, which is still absurd. And we should say that some of those do very

00:14:13.500 good work, right? Some of those will be, you know, maybe taking care of the elderly in local

00:14:17.780 communities. They might be sports bodies or whatever else. But what has happened

00:14:22.180 is that since the early 2000s,

00:14:25.020 again, with this first glut of mass immigration,

00:14:28.520 there was a change in the type of NGOs

00:14:30.540 that we saw.

00:14:32.960 Up until the 80s and even into the 90s,

00:14:36.540 again, the big two parties,

00:14:38.600 just as they had the exact same economic policy,

00:14:42.040 they both also outsourced social policy

00:14:44.200 to the Catholic Church.

00:14:45.560 The Catholic Church went through a dramatic collapse

00:14:47.740 in the late 90s and the early 00s

00:14:49.980 as various scandals and reports came out.

00:14:53.020 That's ground well covered before.

00:14:55.500 But the upshot of that is that the Irish Catholic Church

00:15:00.760 had phenomenal power in the NGO sector,

00:15:04.260 or what would have been traditionally what we call now the NGO sector.

00:15:07.740 And into that void stepped a whole new generation of NGOs

00:15:12.060 who were driven by radical left and social justice theory policies.

00:15:16.180 And so we saw, just as there was a mass of immigration happening, illegal immigration happening, we had a justice minister in 2004 saying that 80 to 90 percent of all immigration under asylum schemes were bogus in Ireland.

00:15:33.940 And that statistic has remained consistent.

00:15:36.440 But in this time, as I say, these left wing social justice theory driven migrant councils and things like this also sprung up and helped frustrate the asylum system, bogged down the asylum system to help keep anyone who came to this country, came to Ireland in the country.

00:15:59.700 So there has been terrific abuse of the asylum system from the early 2000s.

00:16:04.820 And ironically, the government, well, not ironically, I mean, tacitly, they agree.

00:16:08.460 They are funding these NGOs to the tune of over six billion per year.

00:16:12.340 So we've also seen a huge explosion in the number of courses in universities catering for these NGO, for the NGO sector as well.

00:16:24.180 So this is a major problem.

00:16:26.480 Ireland, we're going through a period where we are forcing our nurses, our skilled laborers who can't purchase a house at home, who can't have a decent quality of life at home like that fireman you spoke to, who feel they have to emigrate.

00:16:41.740 And we're rewarding rubbish courses, let's be honest.

00:16:46.060 Empty courses are courses that lead to massive economic dependence on the state, first of all, to pay their bills, but secondly, a breakdown in social cohesion. 0.93

00:16:55.600 so we're producing and giving a home to these NGOs at an alarming rate which is terrible for

00:17:02.420 the country yeah I uh I went to a neighborhood in uh the larger Dublin area called Kulak

00:17:09.480 which is sort of a lower income area working class um you know not not a powerful neighborhood not a

00:17:15.800 wealthy neighborhood but the government announced and it was without consultation let alone you know

00:17:21.760 giving the locals a veto, they just announced that they were going to turn a large

00:17:25.260 former paint factory, like it was a huge facility, an enormous complex. They were going to turn it

00:17:31.900 into an urban refugee camp right in the middle of the neighborhood, right across the street

00:17:36.580 from like a kid's arcade and the kid's movie theater. They were going to put hundreds of

00:17:42.680 military age migrant men, just plunk it in this neighborhood. And, and it was sort of a fait 1.00

00:17:49.440 complete that that's what surprised me about ireland is there's really no consultation there's

00:17:54.100 very little disclosure it's like an ambush on the local people in the case of kulak they marched

00:18:00.840 and marched and marched and there was even a bit of a mini riot one day and to my surprise the

00:18:06.920 government blinked but in other places where there hasn't been such a vigorous response

00:18:11.680 they just plow ahead like the like in um county i think it was tipperary there's this little town

00:18:17.960 called Dundrum, a village, 200 people.

00:18:23.040 And the local country club was turned

00:18:25.900 into a migration facility for 200 for... 0.99

00:18:28.280 So immediately the Irish became a minority

00:18:30.620 in Dundrum, Tipperary.

00:18:33.260 And what gets me, what shocks me is

00:18:35.960 there's no consultation, there's no veto.

00:18:38.460 It's just announced, poof, fait accompli.

00:18:41.040 That sounds strange to me.

00:18:42.580 How do the Irish, who are rebellious people, 1.00

00:18:44.760 how do they abide that? 1.00

00:18:46.500 Well, you put your finger on exactly what's bringing everything to a boil right now in Ireland.

00:18:50.740 And it was precisely this policy.

00:18:53.280 So the first thing that enabled it is Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael,

00:18:57.580 these two parties who have been in power for over a century,

00:19:00.640 they are losing support to such a point where they now can only rule together.

00:19:05.940 Once upon a time, they could rule on their own.

00:19:08.160 But the biggest issue is they have no actual opposition.

00:19:12.480 Sinn Féin, who are the biggest opposition party,

00:19:15.160 are actually silent partners.

00:19:17.080 They are a socialist 32-counties Republican party.

00:19:21.400 And the thing is that Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael,

00:19:23.760 they want to open borders to keep feeding

00:19:25.940 their foreign direct investment addiction.

00:19:29.540 And socialist Sinn Féin want to open borders

00:19:31.920 because, well, ideologically, that's what they want.

00:19:34.840 So their cause is the same.

00:19:37.520 So there is nobody shouting stop.

00:19:39.940 There is no political party shouting stop.

00:19:41.640 But based on the comfort that Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael in particular have of being in power, they've developed a very ruthless authoritarian streak.

00:19:50.840 What you said there, no consultation, no veto.

00:19:53.980 These were the precise words used by Leo Varadkar, first of all, the former Fine Gael leader and every leader since, to describe their policy of placing migrants, asylum seekers who they know are overwhelmingly illegal and are abusing the system into small communities.

00:20:15.040 So again, just last year, 2025, the leader of our country, Micheál Martin, said that up to 80% of asylum claims in Ireland were bogus last year.

00:20:25.980 Yet Ireland set a new record for the number of asylum claimants last year that were accepted into the system.

00:20:32.000 So it makes no sense.

00:20:33.780 Also, we know that over decades there has been a de facto open border system in Ireland.

00:20:39.600 We have one or two, a handful of really good politicians.

00:20:42.740 Carol Nolan is one of them. She's an independent politician who asked our Justice Minister, Helen McEntee, back in 2024, January 2024, she asked her basically to go through the process of who is and isn't accepted into Ireland.

00:20:58.460 And the answer was quite stunning. We found that, for example, almost 30,000 people in 2023 and 2024 showed up at Dublin Airport with no paperwork, no documentation.

00:21:13.060 They just threw them in the bin, tore them up, whatever, and claimed asylum in Ireland. 0.91

00:21:17.480 Now, under the laws of the land at that time, our 2004 Immigration Act, they should have been deported on the spot, but they were all accepted through into the system. 0.97

00:21:25.360 when the Justice Minister was asked 0.83

00:21:28.340 about the vetting for people coming into the country.

00:21:32.840 Well, it was found at Eurodac

00:21:34.560 that all of the various methods that the EU has in place

00:21:38.460 to do background checks on immigrants,

00:21:41.460 none of these were accessed by the Irish government

00:21:43.380 for over a decade.

00:21:44.880 In fact, we know they were never accessed.

00:21:47.120 So the Irish government have run a de facto open borders policy.

00:21:51.260 It doesn't matter if you're a legitimate asylum claimant

00:21:53.920 or if you're bogus, 0.71

00:21:54.640 you're allowed into the country which has put phenomenal pressure on housing resources which

00:22:00.200 has led to the government then forcing groups of migrants into small close-knit communities like 0.96

00:22:06.320 Kulak like Dundrum and the problem is people aren't stupid people understand that these are 0.91

00:22:11.320 people who have come illegally who are lying to get into the country and as you said they have 0.91

00:22:17.740 been forced into very small close-knit communities so this poses an existential threat to these 1.00

00:22:22.620 ancient communities. That in some cases, like where I come from in County Clare, we have Le Hinch

00:22:28.500 and in East Diamond back in West Clare, we have in some towns as many immigrants living there as

00:22:33.760 natives. And we know that those people have entered the country under false pretenses. 0.99

00:22:38.060 But the government has said no veto, no consultation, you will accept this. And so naturally 0.86

00:22:43.540 what's happened is that there's been terrific pushback. There has been fires at asylum centers

00:22:47.840 in over 30 locations since the middle of 2024.

00:22:51.060 We saw just yesterday in the Netherlands

00:22:53.680 a similar case where they have adopted

00:22:56.800 a similar policy to the Irish of no consultation

00:22:59.100 and people, you know, feeling their back to the wall,

00:23:03.380 feeling not listened to, did the same thing.

00:23:05.420 The asylum centre went up in flames.

00:23:08.900 To me, this is incredibly authoritarian 1.00

00:23:10.880 and incredibly reckless governance.

00:23:13.780 And so this is, as you rightly felt,

00:23:16.200 This is the vibe in Ireland at the moment. The government will run roughshod over the locals and whether they're getting their marching orders from Brussels, we hear that 70% of laws are dictated by Brussels, or whether it's of their own volition or whether it's been driven by NGOs, I suspect a combination of all three.

00:23:37.560 What matters is that there is a clear wedge between our government and the electorate, filling that wedge are the NGO sector, academics and others who have the ear of the government and who are shaping government policy.

00:23:51.900 But the electorate does not matter.

00:23:53.820 They do not count because the government understands that right now we have a crippled democracy whereby they can't really be voted out of power.

00:24:01.280 So they are, while they can run roughshod over the people, they are.

00:24:04.200 Yeah. You know, we just saw a week ago in the United Kingdom an enormous sea change in, they had a major election for city councillors and the Labour Party lost almost 1,500 of them. Reform gained almost the exact amount. And I've been watching Reform UK pretty closely. Their main message is, I went to one of their by-elections, their motto was freeze immigration, stop the boats. That couldn't be clearer.

00:24:31.800 And I know in Ireland they come either through Dublin Airport or they walk across from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.

00:24:38.360 They just walk over.

00:24:39.820 Let me tell you why I love going to Ireland, though.

00:24:42.320 Ireland has a lot of problems, and some of them are heartbreaking. 1.00

00:24:45.320 And by the way, migrant, you bring in military-aged migrant men.

00:24:50.100 Migrant men are sexually active, and I hate to say it, some of these people come from countries where the way to approach women is very different. 0.96

00:24:56.800 And there has been spectacular cases of horrific, I'm just going to say it, sex crimes committed by migrants. 0.99

00:25:04.720 And it goes back to vetting. 1.00

00:25:05.900 And what the heck are we doing? 0.98

00:25:06.980 And are these real migrants? 1.00

00:25:08.720 But let me tell you what gives me hope. 0.98

00:25:10.300 And this is why I like going.

00:25:11.620 I go to Ireland because I'm fascinated by the problems, which I see in Canada, too.

00:25:16.180 But let me just throw four quick things at you, doctor.

00:25:20.160 And I'd like you to respond to them because these are four things that I'm sort of jealous of.

00:25:25.520 You mentioned you call them holliers in Canada. We call them truckers. There was almost like a national strike of truckers and farmers together over gas prices. And it was amazing. They blocked highways everywhere. And there was it was such a feeling of solidarity. Remind me of the Canadian truckers. But it was bigger.

00:25:43.620 So that's evidence. Exhibit A, let's say. Exhibit B is I have been to marches in Dublin and Cork with up to 50,000 people against mass immigration. And that's without any major party or funder. It's just grassroots people. And proportionately, that would be hundreds of thousands of people in Canada. That's exhibit B.

00:26:09.000 exhibit c there was recently a vote for president and the presidential vote is you know it's a

00:26:16.320 complicated system where you need supportive incumbent politicians that you can't just be a

00:26:21.260 ordinary person you need sort of permission from the establishment and a uh a conservative oriented 0.82

00:26:27.980 woman tried to get on the ballot she was blocked and well over a hundred thousand people wrote her

00:26:35.260 name in which again is they went to the ballot to write her name in which is astonishing the that

00:26:42.420 was amazing and then the fourth point this is my favorite and i'm just listing these because

00:26:46.960 every one of these things tells me that ireland's heart is in a different place than its mouth let's

00:26:54.020 say and the last thing is there was a constitutional referendum to take out motherhood from the irish

00:27:00.380 constitution i don't think most people around the world know that ireland has a special section about

00:27:05.640 mothers in the constitution it's it's so surprising because it you know when you think

00:27:12.560 of constitutions you think well the party of the first part article two like you think technical

00:27:16.760 legalistic but this is a beautiful sort of national love letter to mums and for some weird reason the

00:27:25.140 government said let's get rid of that well you can guess the reasons and even though the entire

00:27:30.040 establishment supported it this was given a thumping by the people so those four things

00:27:35.080 i'm telling you those four things give me reason for hope and that's why i keep coming back to

00:27:41.420 ireland because i want to see how this story is going to end i just want to know how it's going

00:27:44.720 to happen um i think what what's makes us very unique in a way is that we have no history of

00:27:52.200 right-wing politics we have the narrowest left-right axis in europe um at the moment all of

00:27:58.480 our major parties are left to far left now two two small micro parties have emerged in recent

00:28:05.560 years and two who are so economically very left but socially conservative around certain issues

00:28:11.000 particularly in abortion and we have independent ireland who are trying to who are more populist

00:28:16.180 orientated i would say they're certainly um they're they both parties were there during the

00:28:23.180 recent haulier protests and they they equated themselves very well they stood with the with

00:28:28.400 the protesters um there's a by-election coming up in the west of ireland in galway um this month and

00:28:35.880 it's a toss-up at the moment between one of the establishment parties the phoenix gail candidate

00:28:41.340 and this independent ireland candidate now he's a fascinating character because he was a member

00:28:47.040 of Fianna Fáil, one of the ruling

00:28:48.980 two. However, he stood

00:28:51.040 with the people in Ross Cahill,

00:28:53.420 which is a very small tourist town

00:28:55.060 in the west of Ireland.

00:28:57.100 This was one of the very early

00:28:58.860 cases of an asylum

00:29:00.820 centre being blocked by locals,

00:29:03.580 by farmers,

00:29:04.760 who put down barricades outside

00:29:06.900 and said no entry here.

00:29:08.540 Eventually the hotel was burnt in the middle of the night.

00:29:11.340 But afterwards, this

00:29:12.700 politician, he'd done nothing wrong,

00:29:15.000 he just stood with the people of his

00:29:16.880 constituency he had his home raided by police he eventually left the party so he earned some

00:29:23.860 credit there but there over the past when the hollier protests um the trucker protests sorry

00:29:29.280 were happening here over fuel costs two to three weeks ago he again came to the fore and stood with

00:29:35.520 the people so he is a very interesting character and there's a couple of characters in this

00:29:40.380 independent ireland um who definitely have the populist touch and what you said is that right

00:29:46.160 now our biggest problem is right-wing political dysfunction but that's born out of a somewhat of

00:29:52.360 a learned helplessness because we have never had a right-wing party in Ireland as I said what we

00:29:59.340 had was two parties who had their focus on nationalism early 20th century nationalism who

00:30:05.360 outsourced their social policy to the church but that's not the same thing as having a right-wing

00:30:09.500 party with defined right-wing principles so that's where we are we need to first of all

00:30:15.180 overcome some of the cultural baggage that comes with that.

00:30:18.980 For example, it's conservative is a dirty word in Ireland,

00:30:22.240 because if you say conservative, people's mind goes straight to Margaret Thatcher.

00:30:26.000 It goes straight to hunger protests in the north.

00:30:29.100 You're not a nationalist if you mention this word.

00:30:31.160 So we have to get around certain booby traps there that, you know, we've inherited.

00:30:38.640 I do definitely think that this wave of populism that's spreading across Europe

00:30:45.040 And as you say there, we saw decisively win in England this past week with reform and restore doing both doing well, that I feel like there's a there's a lot of people in Ireland who are just waiting for that moment to materialize or just waiting for the character to pull that all together.

00:31:02.280 And I do believe that if somebody can step into that breach successfully, it will it'll catch on very strongly.

00:31:10.420 Yeah, I sure hope so. You know, I'm aware that economic policy in Ireland is tilted left. I mean, it is in a lot of places. And especially with the kind of money being injected there, it's almost like free money. Who wouldn't be socialist?

00:31:24.340 the right to me the the issue of ethnicity and nationalism borders immigration is more important

00:31:31.940 than every other issue combined i would rather i'm just speaking personally i would rather support a

00:31:37.440 socialist who protected the borders than frankly actually there's a lot of libertarian economists

00:31:43.300 who believe in open borders um i and and so when i'm in ireland to me whether you're a populist on

00:31:50.580 left or populist on the right if you're listening you can hear people like that fireman working

00:31:55.800 class guy couldn't find a place to live is he right wing or left wing or is he just someone 0.60

00:32:00.420 who wants to be irish living in ireland and the thing about ireland is you know there are expat

00:32:06.200 communities around the world but there's only one ireland it's a it's a little place and the irish

00:32:10.760 are the indigenous people there we use the phrase indigenous when we're talking about canadian 0.99

00:32:14.520 indians or aborigines in australia but the irish are the indigenous people and ought not they to

00:32:21.880 have a homeland i'm not saying that they should be enemies to other races or ethnicity i'm just

00:32:26.640 saying let them have ireland for the irish i just like i love going to italy because it's italian

00:32:31.640 that doesn't mean i'm anti-swiss i just think italy should be italian and i think ireland they've got

00:32:37.500 that woke mind virus where they sort of have Gadsaba called suicidal altruism.

00:32:43.680 They want so badly to support the underdog that they're undermining themselves.

00:32:49.140 I think you've hit on something very important in our psyche.

00:32:52.280 The problem is we're actually too nice.

00:32:54.060 We're a bit like the Canadians.

00:32:55.240 We're too nice for our own good.

00:32:56.700 And people have sensed that and taken advantage of that,

00:32:59.900 particularly in the NGO sector and in certain elements of hard-left academia

00:33:03.780 who have inserted themselves as that wedge

00:33:06.460 between the electorate and the government,

00:33:08.760 that they've understood that Irish people

00:33:11.280 are fundamentally very good, very warm, very open-hearted.

00:33:14.720 We're famous the world over for it,

00:33:16.200 and I think that has been very effectively weaponized.

00:33:18.900 But I would agree with you that all politics at this point

00:33:21.680 is immigration politics.

00:33:23.500 For me, I often put in similar terms to you

00:33:26.740 what you just described there,

00:33:28.160 that politics left are right, socialism, whatever,

00:33:30.800 that economic, they are essentially disagreements amongst siblings, you know, that's what within a

00:33:36.660 nation. And that's okay. Sometimes you'll have economic ups, sometimes you'll have economic

00:33:41.400 downs. But you see, once you're all of that same family, once you have a bad time, you'll come

00:33:46.360 together and you'll say, hey, let's get our dig ourselves out of this hole. But that social

00:33:50.280 cohesion breaks down when you have people from all over the world who are pursuing maybe personal

00:33:56.220 economic goals who are pursuing different goals who have you see that's the big issue a nation

00:34:01.180 breaks down when you aren't all driven in the same direction and um so i absolutely agree that

00:34:07.340 um as a all politics in all european nations at this point in canada as well is migration politics

00:34:15.120 well we're sure going to keep an eye on it we enjoy coming over the warm welcome we have

00:34:19.760 you know i i admire some of the independent journalists in ireland but there's very few

00:34:24.240 of them. I've had a chance to meet many of them. I love gripped, G-R-I-P-T dot I-E. I think they're

00:34:30.220 very credible. They do good journalism and they really made a difference. Um, there are some

00:34:36.180 citizen journalists on the street with their, with their iPhone cameras. But I think that in

00:34:41.320 addition to a political problem, Ireland really does have a media problem. When I say I attended

00:34:46.480 some of these large rallies at it, they were often completely ignored by the regime media

00:34:52.200 or of the regime media, as I call it, reported on them, it was to denigrate them, to paint them as

00:34:57.220 extreme, to downplay the size of the turnout. Like, I know what it means to be in a 50,000 or

00:35:04.080 100,000 person rally. I've been in them from Sao Paulo to London. Ireland has mustered a lot of

00:35:11.100 people. And if it weren't for these independent media, no one would know. And I think that just

00:35:17.840 like there's a media cartel sorry a political cartel in ireland there's a media cartel too

00:35:22.520 give me give me a word on that before i i know we've kept you for a long time but just give me

00:35:26.500 no i'm on the media situation delighted to talk don't worry as i said you do great work and i

00:35:32.080 appreciate it so i'm more than happy to to to be here delighted but and that's a very important

00:35:37.140 point again a lot of people in a lot of countries you know will in a troll way where you say ah

00:35:42.000 the the media is bought and sold by the government but the problem is in ireland it's literally true

00:35:46.980 It's literally true, okay, that what we have in Ireland is that there's numerous ways that government buys off the national media.

00:35:54.680 The first way is they scrapped VAT, so your value-added tax on newspapers, which was at 12.5%, and they got rid of it down to 0%.

00:36:03.800 The second way is that there is a government, sorry, a politics journalist government advisor pipeline.

00:36:10.940 So the leaders of the various parties and the leading figures in government all have multiple advisers around them to the tune for the two for the two Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael leaders.

00:36:21.380 It's a million euro per year is being paid out to special advisers who are overwhelmingly drawn from politics journalists.

00:36:27.780 So there's a massive incentive for them to be on side with the government.

00:36:30.760 But then another very real and a very damaging way that the government owns or can do hands off editorializing of the news is through Commission the Man, which is our regulatory body for the media.

00:36:49.040 And this Commission the Man, and if you were to go to their website, you would see it again, highly ideological, their mission statement driven by social justice theory.

00:36:57.820 They hand out substantial grants, large grants every year or twice a year.

00:37:05.800 And these are handed out to the national media to cover topics that are fundamental to government policy.

00:37:17.440 So for the book Vandalizing Ireland, I went through all of these and I looked to see,

00:37:22.660 Did any national media outlet get any money, any grant money to cover migration or climate agenda or populism in any way critical fashion to the government?

00:37:35.800 Not a single one did.

00:37:37.580 So the government, in this hands-off way, but it's a very real way, by controlling the purse strings, they literally control the national media in Ireland.

00:37:47.180 And it's unparalleled to another country in Europe.

00:37:49.760 And in Canada, we have the CBC. In Ireland, it's RTE, and you can really feel the bias coming through.

00:37:57.900 Well, listen, I love going to Ireland partly because people see us as an alternative source of information.

00:38:05.540 And because we're coming from Canada and because, to be honest, I knew next to nothing about Ireland before I first set foot there a year or two ago,

00:38:12.860 I think people can see I'm blank slate. I'm not on this side or that side.

00:38:17.540 I'm just trying to figure it out using my Canadian experiences to guide me.

00:38:23.700 And, you know, one of the things we just say is point the camera, just show what the camera shows.

00:38:28.300 And in these marches, you know, one of these immigration marches, a couple of them, we would walk by the open borders advocates and I would note the difference in flags.

00:38:39.000 The Irish marches had, they call it the tricolor.

00:38:42.620 That's what they call the Irish flag.

00:38:44.560 Thousands and thousands and thousands of tricolors.

00:38:47.140 like it was actually beautiful and the the pro-immigration open borders counter protesters

00:38:52.740 never had an irish flag they had the palestine flag they had the trans flag they like the to me

00:39:01.260 i i know what that means i know who is on the antifa uh destructive left and who are the the

00:39:09.480 real people and i don't know i just found when i passed by those counter protesters i knew

00:39:15.200 that I had finally grokked what was going on.

00:39:17.900 And, of course, they were all paid to be there by the NGOs we talked about.

00:39:21.040 Well, listen, Dr. Owen Lanahan, I'd recommend your book to our viewers.

00:39:26.000 I'm proud to have bought your book, even though I haven't finished it yet.

00:39:29.160 You know what? You've got me interested in this Galway by-election.

00:39:32.740 Maybe I'll read it on the plane over there.

00:39:34.520 It's great to talk to you. Thanks very much for spending so much time with us.

00:39:37.920 And what's your address on Twitter for people who want to keep in touch

00:39:42.160 with Irish news and politics?

00:39:44.120 So it's just my name, at Owen, E-O-I-N, Lenehan, L-E-N-I-H-A-N, all one, at Owen Lenehan.

00:39:53.940 And I like to just exactly, like you say, keep everyone up to date with what's happening there in Ireland.

00:39:58.140 But again, let me just reiterate, thank you for what you're doing.

00:40:01.560 You know, you're really bringing awareness internationally of, because I think most people still have this idea of Ireland, of the rolling green fields and, you know, the quiet man and all of this.

00:40:12.040 but i mean i'm sure well you are i know from your reporting that you are stunned by the changes that

00:40:17.980 are happening so thank you for bringing that to a wider audience well you're very kind and we love

00:40:21.860 doing it and i have two videographers who go with me and each of them wants to be the videographer

00:40:27.120 on the trip because they so enjoy the visit and by the way it is absolutely beautiful i mean when

00:40:32.340 i was in dunbrum i felt like i was in a storybook it was impossibly beautiful and to to borrow a

00:40:39.100 phrase from your book to vandalize that is so sinful it's like it really you know i sometimes

00:40:46.300 say this when i'm in beautiful places it makes me nostalgic for them even though i'm even when

00:40:50.840 i'm there i feel nostalgic for for how lovely they are thanks for your time keep up the fight

00:40:56.940 and we'll stay in touch i hope i would love that thank you very much right on our pleasure there

00:41:02.000 he is dr owen lenahan and his book is vandalizing ireland and i'll be back over there in the next

00:41:07.640 week or so for a court case involving censorship, which is something we didn't have a chance to

00:41:12.680 touch on today. But Ireland, unfortunately, is being known for its censorship. And we'll keep

00:41:17.880 telling you that story. Well, that's our show for the day. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us

00:41:22.540 here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 19, 2026

EZRA LEVANT ｜ How mass immigration is reshaping Ireland beneath the surface — Dr. Eoin Lenihan

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