FOR A LONG time we’ve waited for a TD to give us an image as unforgettable as Willie O’Dea pointing that gun directly at a camera. For a long time we have waited for a moment of Dáil tension as remarkable as Paul Gogarty’s “Fuck you, Deputy Stagg” outburst. 

Michael Lowry managed to deliver on both fronts with two fingers this week when he made an obscene gesture directed at People Before Profit TD Paul Murphy, who was filming Lowry on his phone as the Dáil once again descended into chaos. Lowry at first claimed: “I was telling him to sit down with my fingers.” Then, perhaps upon realising there are limits even to the credulity of the Irish public, conceded that he “made an errant gesture under provocation”. 

The face-off between Lowry and Murphy was not the only such showdown in the Dáil chamber this week, which also saw Michael Collins of Independent Ireland sparring with Regional Independent Group. This dispute-within-a-dispute involved McGrath calling Collins “a traitor“. Those Tipperary TDs are a spiky bunch. 

But what is everyone arguing about exactly? Well, you’ll never guess. It just so happens to be the same damn thing they’ve been arguing about since they formed the government two months ago. Speaking rights. It’s been covered extensively in this column and beyond and while some may be frustrated that the running of the country has been allowed to fall by the wayside in the meantime, I am simply frustrated that I have not been furnished with new material for this column in quite a while. 

Luckily though, the Dáil speaking rights row is not the only recent evidence we have that public discourse in this country has strayed further into total incoherence. 

Take for example the recent scandal around online comedian Garron Noone, who returned to social media this week. Noone posted a nine-minute video statement after a brief internet hiatus due to the response garnered by a controversial series of videos in which he appeared to suggest some link between immigration with crime. 

In his comeback video, Noone distanced himself from the flurry that followed saying: “What I said could have been communicated better and I should be held to account for that. Far-right people misappropriating what I was saying to bolster their own agenda was absolutely horrifying to me and the last thing that I would want.” He did, however, caption the video with the statement “I stand by what I said in my first video”. 

While there were factual inaccuracies in what Noone originally said with respect to crime, and questions over the way in which the Mayo man went about voicing his opinions, it’s not simply that he spoke without thinking. It’s not simply that tens of thousands of people liked his posts before he deleted them. It’s not that thousands more attacked or defended him, each in varying degrees of good faith, ranging from encouraging and educational to personally vindictive to downright hagiographic. It’s that the entire ecosystem of information is breaking.

This is a conversation that began when Conor McGregor, a man who by rights should be a pariah, was welcomed behind the pulpit of the White House press room to spew vitriol about Ireland’s immigration policy in that fake little accent he’s got these days. It intensified when an online comedian whose oeuvre is, as he admits himself, primarily composed of clips of himself shouting at cups of tea and explaining Irish snacks to Americans, picked up the baton and freestyled a video on the subject of immigration.

The aftermath was marked by a rake of politicians sharing pictures of Noone looking like a Padré Pio alongside captions that would have made more sense had be thrown in an internment camp rather than voluntarily deleting his social media accounts because he called for a conversation about immigration and then promptly got one.

Shame on this government and their Ceann Comhairle. pic.twitter.com/iQJpFISc3c

— Paul Murphy 🏳️‍⚧️ (@paulmurphy_TD) March 25, 2025

Take a moment to think about that series of events and ask yourself where we are headed. Does the way in which these events are unfolding seem to you like a society that is ready to turn a corner and go ‘back to normal’ anytime soon? Is there any suggestion anywhere in all of this that we are on course to find our footing and establish a means by which we all speak about things as if we occupy the same reality?

How is anyone supposed to understand anyone else when we’re having conversations instigated by people who know very little about what they’re speaking on, generating thousands of people speaking over each other at once, each vying for some kind of territory on a social media landscape that increasingly feels like a zero-sum contest for attention? It’s like if the national agenda was being set by 98FM’s Dublin Talks.

We can see first hand what happens in a society where the well has been thoroughly poisoned. We need only look at the current iteration of the United States, where one day the Vice President is lulling you into a false sense of security with his shamrock socks and only two weeks later the President is announcing tariffs specifically targeting the pharmaceutical industry that is essential to the health of your economy.

Those tariffs were threatened this week in the same 24-hour period as Ireland’s department of Foreign Affairs issued a travel warning for transgender travellers who may be heading to the United States. While we’re on the subject of Ireland’s information ecosystem, it’s worth noting that there were high-profile voices who hailed Martin as ‘the Trump whisperer’ after the supposed success of his statewide trip, such as David McWilliams. How does that analysis hold up just 14 days later as Trump specifically name-checks Ireland, speaking of his love for Ireland, as he announces his strategy to attempt to gut our economy?

As of this week, even the government’s own messaging outside of the Dáil has been all warnings about how Trump’s tariffs are going to harm the Irish economy. This contrasts sharply with their messaging inside of the Dáil, which seems to be primarily concerned with making sure that Michael Lowry and his friends have ample time to speak their mind, because god knows they could hardly be expected to do so under the time allotted to the government they’ve chosen to ally with. 

In a statement issued this week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin confirmed that he simply does not believe that opposition TDs actually care about the speaking rights issue. That it’s all a matter of political gamesmanship. He described protests by opposition TDs this week as a “new low”. 

It was good of him to take a stance that sums up the problem so neatly. How is a parliamentary democracy supposed to function when a government is prepared to dismissively stonewall the concerns of nearly half the country’s TDs, representing over a million Irish voters?

But if you feel like you’re not being listened to, don’t worry. They’re not flipping you off. They’re only telling you to sit down with their fingers.