EVERY FEW WEEKS, in the minutes and hours immediately after I file this column, something will happen that I would have really liked to write about.

Last week, that ‘thing’ happened to be Paul ‘Bono’ Hewson — you may be aware of him — who is promoting his new book and trying to convince the world that he has cared deeply about Gaza this whole time that he hasn’t been talking about it or doing anything about it in any meaningful way.

In an interview with Brendan O’Connor last weekend, Bono defended his decision to accept the US Presidential Medal of Freedom from Joe Biden, even as the US facilitated and funded Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

“I took that medal on behalf of all those people who don’t get medals: the activists, the people who are getting killed now in Gaza,” Bono said, as if that makes some kind of sense. At this point, we should probably just openly admit that we’re giving the guy an amnesty because he wrote With or Without You, because that is among the most ludicrous statements that an Irish person has ever made, and if we decide he’s still worth hearing from after this then let’s not pretend it’s for any other reason besides the songs he wrote decades ago.

Bono’s were arguably the most egregious example of something pointed out in the last edition of this column. In the last two weeks, there has been a clear shift in the approach of high-profile, mainstream figures in the forthrightness with which they will speak about what’s happening in Gaza.

We have since learned, however, that Bono is not the only Irish person who seems to struggle with it. 

There were competing high-profile gaffes in Irish politics this week. The first belonged to Fianna Fáil TD Cathal Crowe, who told the Dáil: “The British Army was a bad actor on this island for many centuries but even in the worst of days, when its cities were being bombed by the terror organisations of the IRA, it never retaliated by bombing and shooting the civilian population of Ireland.”

Now, I don’t want to flatter you, but I would be prepared to wager that 100% of the people who read this column can spot the mistake in there. Can you see it? Yes, you’ve got it! It’s that he’s completely wrong. 

Forgetting that the British Army shot Irish civilians is sort of like forgetting that they were ever here at all. Like giving a speech about the ancient pharaohs and saying: “Well, at least they never built the pyramids.” Maybe it’s plausible that you could forget one Bloody Sunday, but forgetting both is downright outlandish. 

Crowe’s bio on the Fianna Fáil website describes him as a “passionate historian,” which is cool. He’s even got a history book coming out later this year, titled: ‘Penal Laws, Plantations and Plenty Other Things The British Didn’t Do in Ireland’. 

The second ‘gaffe’ came from MEP Ciarán Mullooly, when it was revealed that he had used AI to compose a letter to Ursula von der Leyen, urging the EU to deliver more aid into Gaza. The letter featured a made-up story about a child named Gazi, and at one point the screed mysteriously quotes the song Don’t You Worry Child by Swedish House Mafia. He used to be a journalist, you know.

‘Will you tell [Gazi], “Don’t you worry, don’t you worry child, see heaven’s got a plan for you”?’ the letter asks. It also goes on to say that failure to protect and support UN agencies and humanitarian organisations could have a “possible impact on the €109 billion EU-Mercosur agreement”. Don’t think anyone is sure how that’s supposed to work.

Which one do we think was worse, by the way? On the one hand, it’s much easier to believe that Crowe’s was some kind of momentary lapse of reason. Crowe also gave a full-throated apology, backing down rather than doubling down. He even went on the radio on Friday to apologise once more, and compared his blunder to a ‘typo’. Mullooly was not so easily chastened.

Mullooly is resolutely standing behind his letter, which a spokesperson has confirmed was partially written by AI, with artificial intelligence also used for “editing and research”. Perhaps had a human been called upon, they could have edited out the bit where it quotes Swedish House Mafia, but there it remains, on his website, the only MEP statement made about Gaza that makes you wait for the drop.

On Thursday, Mullooly tweeted: ‘We must stop the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in Gaza – I make no apology for using AI to get that message to [von der Leyen]‘, which almost, for a split-second, sounds like it makes sense. Desperate times call for desperate measures, that kind of thing. But Mullooly’s use of AI isn’t a desperate measure, just a lazy one. 

His statement makes it sound like he’s using every tool at his disposal to raise the issue of Gaza, but he is decidedly not. He is asking an LLM to use all of the tools at its disposal, resulting in a letter that was at least partially nonsensical. Mullooly represents 1,224,888 Irish voters, by the way. Just on the off-chance any of them might happen to feel aggrieved that he’s in Belgium deciding what he’s going to say to Ursula von der Leyen by shaking a Magic 8 Ball. 

We must stop the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in Gaza - I
make no apology for using AI to get that message to @vonderleyen and the @coe @EU_Commission pic.twitter.com/S939fi7oVt

— Ciaran Mullooly MEP (@ciaranmullooly) May 29, 2025

The haughty defiance of Mullooly’s ‘I make no apology’ really is amusing, making it sound as though his crime was speaking too stridently or being too impassioned, rather than sending a letter to the President of the European Commission that only by some miracle didn’t end up featuring the line ‘From Paris to Berlin, and every disco I get in, my heart is pumping for love’. 

In entertainment news, it appears that we’ve lost the Corminator. Yes, Cormac Brannagan, once of Tallafornia fame, has officially turned his back on the mainstream media that once catapulted him to fame. In an Instagram story post praising Gript and slagging off RTÉ, Branagan said: “You are only hearing the narrative that the government want you to… Wake up, sheeple.”

The post tallies with other recent social media posts by Brannagan, who recently broke a four-year Twitter hiatus to post a petition to prevent the government from converting Citywest Hotel into an IPAS centre, along with the caption: ‘Please share and sign this petition to save my hometown from further destruction’. You’d think that the guy who came up with ‘It’s only five eggs, per bloke, per day’ would be able to look at what underpins the ‘Ireland is full’ logic and realise that immigrants are not the problem when it comes to the way the country allocates its resources, but apparently not. 

And if nothing else, this flies in the face of my speculative attempt to pressure RTÉ into bringing Tallafornia back. It’s never been more needed. Remember that guy from the first episode who was like ‘the nipple, the nipple, the nipple-ipple-ipple’? Let’s get him back in the mix. Maybe he’s still okay.

Alas, it seems that many of Ireland’s public pronouncements this week have been confusing, disappointing and ineloquent. If only Swedish House Mafia were here.