Jim Gavin hits out at 'utterly false online smears' published about him

The former Dublin GAA boss said he will do “whatever is necessary” to confront the issue.

LAST UPDATE | 22 Sep 2025

FIANNA FÁIL’S PRESIDENTIAL election candidate Jim Gavin has written to social media companies to demand action in response to “smears” posted about him online.

In a statement issued today by Fianna Fáil, Gavin condemned the “utterly false stories” that have been published about him online over the course of the last week.

The party said “malicious smears” were published about Gavin in an attempt to damage his bid for the Áras.

Speaking in New York, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said it was “shocking that people can invent stories” and said he thought that the stories published online had been viewed two million times.

He criticised the dissemination of disinformation and said it is difficult for people to engage with social media companies to have false information taken down.

One of the posts on the social media website X has been viewed over 650,000 times.

The information originated from an account on social media which previously stated it had evidence relating to incidents involving other senior politicians but continued to postpone the planned publication dates.

Gavin has written to Meta, X, TikTok and Coimisiún na Meán demanding that action is taken. He welcomed Meta’s decision to remove several posts from Facebook and Instagram and is awaiting a response from X, TikTok, and the regulator Coimisiún na Meán.

Gavin said he refuses to accept that “the price of participating in public life should involve having to put your family and friends through waves of online abuse and malicious smears”.

“This is not the cost of service – it is a failure of our digital culture,” he said.

He added: “I will continue to take whatever action is necessary to confront this appalling feature of social media. We all need to call it out for what it is: totally unacceptable.

“Social media companies must do far more to protect people from such nasty and destructive behaviour online.”

Martin said Gavin was right in his comments and he is “appalled” at what is happening.

With reporting by Eoghan Dalton and Christina Finn