Gemma O'Doherty
Gemma O'Doherty is an Irish far-right activist and conspiracy theorist. She began her career as a staff writer for the Irish Independent, contributing articles on travel, the criminal justice system and corruption, but was dismissed in 2013. She attempted to run as a candidate in the 2018 Irish presidential election, but failed to secure the minimum qualifying number of nominations required to be added to the ballot. O'Doherty was unsuccessful in the 2019 European Parliament election in Ireland, receiving 1.85% of first preference votes in the Dublin constituency. She unsuccessfully ran in the 2020 Irish general election receiving just under 2% of first preference votes.
Her views on a range of subjects have led to a series of legal actions and calls for tightening of hate-crime legislation. She has been banned from YouTube since July 2019 for violations of its policies on hate speech.
Early life
Gemma O'Doherty was born in Ranelagh in Dublin, to Hubert O'Doherty, a pharmacist, and his wife Sheila. O'Doherty has a BA in Politics and an MA in Equality Studies from University College Dublin. She was a teacher before becoming a journalist, and lived in Spain for a number of years. At age 18, she spent a summer in a kibbutz in Israel. She is the widow of the editor of the Irish Independents Sunday Review, Peter Carvosso. Born in England in 1947, he died of motor neurone disease in January 2015, aged 67; O'Doherty was his second wife.Journalism
O'Doherty joined the Irish Independent in 1995 as a staff writer, later becoming Chief Features Writer. However, her highest-profile work concerned her reporting on Ireland's criminal justice system and on police corruption in the Garda Síochána. In 2013, Roy Greenslade in The Guardian, at the time she was fired from the Irish Independent, described her as "one of Ireland's leading investigative journalists", but mentioned concerns over the ethics of her newsgathering methods. In 2018, another Irish journalist, Michael Clifford, questioned the impact of her investigative work and her use of "theories of conspiracy".In 2010, O'Doherty wrote an article highlighting issues in the investigation into the 1985 death of a priest, Niall Molloy, after a society wedding in County Offaly that included senior Irish political figures, and the collapse of the subsequent manslaughter trial. Her work led to the reopening of the case. According to O'Doherty, her research had "exposed a cover-up of staggering proportions involving several institutions of the State and the Catholic Church." In 2015, a Garda review of the case concluded that the original Garda investigation was correctly concluded.
In April 2013, while investigating the penalty points cancellation scandal, O'Doherty sought to question Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan about the quashing of his own speeding points and called to his private home at approximately 10pm in order to do so, speaking to Callinan's wife. In August 2013, Doherty was fired from the Irish Independent and, though the newspaper rejected any links between the events, editor-in-chief Stephen Rae branded her as a "rogue reporter" for approaching the commissioner without editorial permission. The Irish National Union of Journalists condemned the dismissal as unfair.
O'Doherty lodged a complaint about her dismissal with the Employment Appeals Tribunal, which was resolved in 2014 with Independent News & Media plc tendering an apology and paying her an undisclosed sum. Similarly, she won a defamation case against the Irish Independent at the High Court. As part of the apology, Independent Newspapers stated that it wished to "acknowledge the exceptional work of multi-award winning investigative journalist Gemma O'Doherty for the Irish Independent during the course of a lengthy career".
After the Irish Independent, O'Doherty worked freelance, publicly criticising "the cosy cartel that exists between the press, power and the police in this country". In 2016, she produced a documentary, Mary Boyle: The Untold Story, about the disappearance of a child in 1977, which was published on YouTube. The disappearance of Mary Boyle is the longest running missing child case in Ireland, and the documentary implies political interference in the investigation. It led to O'Doherty being sued for defamation by Fianna Fáil politician Sean McEniff for damages of €75,000. In 2019, after McEniff's death, a judge granted his estate leave to continue the case.
In late 2017, O'Doherty wrote an article, published by Village magazine, concerning allegations of long-term child sexual abuse in Terenure College, Dublin, and followed it up in early 2018 with allegations that the Gardaí did not act on information they had about issues regarding the college's rugby coach, John McClean. A year later, McClean was formally charged with indecently assaulting nine students in Terenure College over a 17-year period.
In August 2019, Village published an editorial on O'Doherty and her relationship with the magazine. It described her as "the It girl for Irish extremism: racism, anti-Islamism, homophobia and transphobia". It defended her previous freelance work for the magazine, saying "O'Doherty's politics were not offensive until some time after Village published its last piece by her" and concluded by stating that "Once O'Doherty revealed herself as racist she was no longer welcome in these pages".
In August 2021, O'Doherty and John Waters launched a freesheet newspaper titled The Irish Light, largely consisting of anti-vaccine propaganda and other conspiracy theories. It is run in conjunction with The Light, a UK publication, and reprints much of the UK version's articles.
In December 2022, Edel Campbell, the mother of Diego Gilsenan, a minor who had died by suicide, called for the removal of her son's image, and that of 41 other people, from the cover of The Irish Light. Their images had been used without permission in videos posted online by O'Doherty, and in a cover story of the freesheet, which linked their deaths to the Covid vaccine. The images used included those of people who had died from suicide and Katie Moran, a camogie player who had died following an incident during a match.
Politics
O'Doherty announced on 19 August 2018 she was seeking a nomination to stand for the Irish presidency in the 2018 election on an anti-corruption platform. However, her campaign fell into controversy when during a nomination hearing she stated that there was state collusion in the murder of journalist Veronica Guerin, and threatened councillors, including the brother of Veronica Guerin, with libel after her claims were strongly disputed. O'Doherty's claims drew labels of a conspiracy theorist from the Irish media, including Veronica's brother, councillor Jimmy Guerin. On 24 September, Laois County Council became the only council to nominate her as a presidential candidate. Having failed to reach the required four county council nominations by 26 September, she could not stand for election. O'Doherty attributed her failure to secure the political nominations to being "blocked by the political elite from contesting."In February 2019, O'Doherty founded Anti-Corruption Ireland, described as a "political movement", which promotes "'truth, justice and integrity in public office', where public servants who abuse citizens' rights and their taxes will lose their jobs, pensions and their liberty". However, O'Doherty's strong across a range of subjects, including "false flag" claims regarding the March 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings, became an issue for ACI. In March and April 2019, the Imperial and Maritime hotels in Cork, a pub in Sligo and a parish hall in Schull cancelled public meetings that had been booked by ACI. In April 2019, the Ballyvolane House hotel in Cork cancelled another ACI booking, citing O'Doherty's views as the reason., ACI was not registered as a political party, but was registered as a "third party" with the Standards in Public Office Commission.
On 10 April 2019, O'Doherty announced that she intended standing in May's European Parliament election, in the Dublin constituency. O'Doherty registered as an independent candidate, and not an ACI candidate, as ACI is not a registered political party, with newspapers reporting her saying that she was going to offer Anti-Corruption Ireland to the Irish people, and saying that "if they don't want it I can say that I tried but they didn't want it, they wanted to continue to pursue the death of their country". However, O'Doherty continued to use ACI branding on some of her European election campaign posters and literature. During the campaign in May 2019, adverts for O'Doherty and ACI appeared on the sides of Dublin Bus, the public service transport operator, carrying the slogan "It is time to take Ireland back". The adverts were criticised by LGBT activists and the National Bus and Rail Union. Dublin Bus's parent company, Córas Iompair Éireann, subsequently announced it and its subsidiary companies would no longer allow political advertising. O'Doherty received 1.8% of first-preference votes in the European Parliament elections, finishing 12th out of 19 candidates in the first count. She was eliminated on the 9th count.
She was later a candidate in the 2019 Dublin Fingal by-election held on 29 November 2019. She received 1,026 first preference votes and was eliminated on the third count. Following the election, Minister for Justice Charles Flanagan suggested that the Irish media had given O'Doherty a "free pass" for her views on immigration, after Fine Gael's candidate for the Wexford by-election, Verona Murphy, had been criticised for linking migration to Ireland with ISIS.
O'Doherty ran as an independent candidate in the Dublin Fingal constituency, in the 2020 general election. She secured 1.97% of the first preference vote and was eliminated on the fifth count.