hello, i'm sean murray, and this is the conversation where we take an alternative look at political events and current affairs through annaries lens. in this show we hope to pick, probe, investigate and uncover the stories that you want to hear. we go where mainstream won't go. this week we talk to a small bond of investigative journalists that have taken ireland by storm. in a country where journalism has sustained track record and upholding the establishment status quo, are we now seeing the unraveling of decades.

old marriage of convenience, but before i of speak to my next guest, let's get a quick overview on this week's topic. so let's introduce. today's guest, joining me

today is on mcneal, paulie doyle and roman shortaul from the ditch. hi guys, welcome to the show, thanks for having us. so first of all, roman, i could ask you for the audience of sake, what is the tidch? um, the ditch, i suppose, is an online investigative uh, journalism website, um, we set up about three years ago, i suppose we felt that there was a gap in the market for ' maybe a bit more focus on investigative journalism and we didn't really know exactly um how we were going to go about it, but we knew that we wanted to to focus uh solely on investigative journalism and i mean we we basically just we started off um you know kind of digging into public registers and land registry records and stuff like that and you know that that seems to be... like our uh, it's still our

bread and butter, um, and that's kind of what we've been focusing on for uh, yeah, nearly three years now, and whose idea was it to to come together? well, i had, i had worked as a journalist kind of on and off over the last 10 years or so, and um, i'd worked on, this was god, it's going back, it was during covid, uh, story about leveradger, leaking document to one of his friends in a doctors union, um, story that was originally published by village magazine and i would have worked on that and it was kind of from that then i've been talking to roman away bit on and off just kind of um just kind of phone calls and texts about about that story first of all and then roman had been doing a bit of he'd been doing a bit of journalism himself in the background like he comes from legal in background himself but he had he had worked in a few other stories in the background and it was partly just from just from these chats of

and kind of talking about what we do what we thought the game was missing and that you know that we thought that there wasn't a left-wing use outlet that kind of focused on things like like land deals and property holdings and suppose from some of our stuff like undeclared properties or the rest and um we kind of thought yeah fuck it why not let's go and give it a go and it was kind of i'd say we would have spoken on and off, maybe might have been two or three months maybe or so and we've been gathering things and building things together and then roman had come across, it was a lovely story and i have to say like we launched yeah as roman said um was it march or april yeah three years ago and roman had come across it was during covid and mihaw martin the most decent man in ireland as we all know had you know during a time when they were very strict prohibitions

on the kind of events you could hold and attend, he attended a prohibited event down in cork that was just so happened to be held in honor of his father uh the champ martin who was an amateur boxer and roman came across this video of michel martin attending this event and and he came across in this video he was telling an an attending garda to go and take her mask off for a we photo opportunity you know and we just kind of thought well like it's great stuff and and actually funny enough to go to romans point about yeah how there wasn't uh how we felt that there wasn't a whole lot of adversarial or confrontational journalism. cork echo had actually covered this, i'm like oh no, like isn't me, martin great, and we were kind of like, really, and um, and look, myself and kind of talked about this since you know, and that was the first story that we published, and it did kind of come from, you know, haven't spoken about it all for whatever, two

or three months and it got to the point where we just said, right, we have to go and do this now, and then keep on doing it, we felt we had to launch with a big story, and i think that kind of story was the only kind of... story that we could launch on, do think like the irish times or the irish independents had published that story, i think meal martin would have been in serious serious danger, we kind of we kind of were hurt a little bit by the fact that you know people were going who the fuck are the ditch, like you know since then yeah we kind of we just kept on at it and um kind of started off maybe story week or so and then we kind of r. up a we bit and now pauli's come on board the last half year or so like so hopefully only bigger and better things that's it then speaking to yourself poli, mean why why is this work important? the short answer is that um there was a lack of stories in the irish

media identifying wrong doing on the part of people in positions of power and authority right? and i was quite struck by you know how successful the guys had been, just the two of them um at holding people to account, identifying wrong doing in opposition to what the irish media, for the most part does and uh has historically done, which is kind of um run stories about politics that are focused on personalities or rely on government sources to kind of leak them story so the narrative is kind of shaped a certain way and so i think it's important to that there are outlets out there that kind of hold people to account and that run these kinds of stories and um yeah and has it been because i know when you when you crack that we were... it's a same and i've seen it in film, how's the relationship between like yourselves and and others in journalism? say say, for example, others that would have been uh comfortable with the the status quo? um, i think they're just kind of confused and vaguely annoyed by

the emergence of um the ditch, there seems to be very much attitude um towards the ditch that we're not somehow legitimate, right? um, we'll run stories and the... press will ignore them and i think if they had another broad broadsheet had run them they'd all end up kind of running them if that if that makes sense um sometimes um the work that we do is acknowledged and other times it isn't it seems to be kind of random in a in a way you know i like i've got to say on that like i always kind of like it when you get your a little bit of lover recognition from an unexpected source you know like where you know sometimes yeah would agree with lot of what paul has said where there yeah there are mainstream journalists who don't like us or don't recognize us whatever and there are reasons for that you know but um do i found that um during the was it was it the summer or was it kind of late spring when we had

published all these stories about nile collins meal martin gets up in the doll goes a diet tribe accuses us of being russian assets etc etc etc and you know i was i was kind of surprised by, i went to did an interview with rte after that and it was kind of like it was a guy called justin murphy um who you know kind of knew what i was kind of getting my seven for like which is fine you know but like he kind of us the opportunity to hold me to account and kind of go buse oh yeah buse meal martin had said that we're a political organization that you know we're not a you know a conventional journalistic outlet you know and to kind of answer for that, you know, whereas if yeah, if if it was a mainstream journalist, it would be, you know, it would be a you, grave attack on the press, and certainly some of the reaction post that attack on us by michal martin was kind of, yeah, similar to what your man,

justin murphy was like, but i have to say uh, very much respected um, shane ross in his sunday independent column that that weekend, um, he... he called it out for what it was, you know, he called it out for attack on the press, attack on the media, he also, if i recall correctly, he compared michal martin's rhetoric to... that day to be more fitting of someone like putin, you know, in that it was attack on the free press, so i always enjoyed that when, look, i wouldn't consider myself liberal myself, but i think when you do have sometimes you people who actually abide by liberal principles like shane ross, like i kind of did appreciate that, a good old sunday independent day, i'm sure some of you haven't had the misfortune have been called a troubles nacr filiact by the sunday independent, who was that in there? for another day, was that rde? yeah, it's only independent isn't isn't a political

organization though, it's completely apolitical and they just stick to the facts and all that kind of thing. if i was a political journalist, i would be asking myself, why i considered to be some sort of a political operator, yeah, well it's not political to uphold a status quo, but it is political to challenge it, yeah, and meal martin wouldn't actually repeat his what he said outside of the doll as well, crucially, no, yeah, that is crucial, we have to we have to give credit though to the establishment media for doing. a great job of holding us to account, they might they might not want to hold the subjects of our stories to account, the people with actual power, but yeah they've they they they've certainly tried to hold us to account, it seems we we only kind of get the phone call um you know from rte or or other establishment media organizations when we're in trouble or they think we're in trouble that's when they want to talk to us you know but when we've a big story you know and someone else is in trouble, they don't really want to hear from us, that's part of the courses your well known i, roman. uh, on,

just getting back to yourself, you had written, recently written a piece for red roof on the the heat speech bill, do you want to tell us a bit about that? yeah, look, mean i just think it's a terrible piece of legislation for so many reasons, um, it's a proposed hate speech um act that is, it's working its way through the aractus at the moment, it's it's it's gone through the doll and it's to come before. the shaned, it's um, what can you say about it? it's you know, it's in it's in in incredibly far reaching and effectively, um, the parts that i'd be most worried about are the the powers that it would give the guardy in investigating so-called hate offenses and the power that the that the guards will have for investigation of people's people's devices and um, and homes and part of this bill you aims to combat transphobic hate crime right

and as part of that it would empower the guardy to investigate these potential crimes, but you know the guards are an organization that shelved an internal gender policy because in the words of um antonette cunningham who is uh she's a representative of one of the guardia unions. like she said that lot of the guards don't know about this kind of thing like you know and that you know under this policy you know uh guards would have been possibly subject um to disciplinary measures if they misgendered their colleagues you know and the guards say oh no we can't do this like so these are the guys that we're supposedly looking to combat these crimes and kind of find that the bit that find mo that that i continue to find most frustrate. about it is the fact that the loudest opponents of this bill are generally from the right and

you these are people who i said i said um in the piece i wrote for that's you know these are these are people who have been in paroxisms of over over phrases like from the river to the sea uh palestine will be free you know um these people think that that's 'shant is beyond the pale and they've been in hysterics over that, but now the're um, now they're opposing this bill on the grounds of they, as they would say free speech, that's another kind of one that grinds my gears away, but always kind of found when irish people talk about free speech, that to me is a bit of an americanism, like always think of freedom of expression, but anyway, i also just think that i think that the left or the or the nominal left or the broad left, whatever you want to call it has kind of seated a lot of ground'. to the right in opposing this bill, and i think it's kind of wild in a country with our history of

censorship, on, on the on the on the censorship of even published discussion about abortion, and then particularly with section 31, which i kind of do think that lot of what you've been saying and what poli and roman have have been saying about this kind of um, whatever you want to call it, a toothlessness or... or kind of an impotance of the irish establishment media, i think it's a legacy of section 31 where you know when we section 31 first introduced. in um, i think it was 1960 in the broadcasting act, and then it was later in the 70s where measures were introduced to ban republicans from the airwaves, um, effectively, there were different ministers involved, you but one minister who certainly came down hard, um, and certainly used these measures um, quite

prodigiously, was connor cruz o'brian a man who later joined the uk unionist party, like... but you could see like throughout the course of section 31, there are kind of there were little whatever you want to call it, you know uh pockets of resistance to it where i think there was there was one reporter who interviewed sean mcchifan and he interviewed him and then just read a transcript of what he had said so technically sean mcjefan wasn't broadcast - over the airwaves this drove government mad like you know and then they kind of... down on it again, the end result of this was government telling journalists what they can and can't publish, and like yeah, there were acts of of resistance along the way, but broadly speaking these guys just said, oh yeah, cool, like if if connor cruise, brian says we shouldn't interview these guys, i'm going to go with him, and people get up on their high

horse about this term, but mean if you can't call connor cruise o-brien a west brick who can you call you, and he was just like... so to me it's just kind of crazy that you know anyone who considers themselves broadly progressive could support this build, but then but then you'll see people then like clare burn um who's an rte presenter uh she was questioning um she was interviewing um liam harrick from the iris council for civil liberties and one of the lines of questioning that she put to him was oh well donald trump jr and this are you happy to be in their corner and it's just like i know it's just like it is that the extent of of your feelings on this that like all right well these bad people are opposing it we better oppose it too just kind of yeah mean like i think yeah what i would like to see would be you know more progressive liberal left

socialist opposition to the bill because it's it's a terrible piece of legislation anyway but it's particularly bad in a country. ireland, so get into the meet on the bones, um, start with you pauly, what uh, for the audience a sick, tell us about some of the the big catches that you've had? um, a big story that we had this year was that uh, leo veradger had um misled sipo when they had um asked him about um number of um donations that were undeclared now to explain that so under the law if you receive donation from an individual. or company over 600 euro you have to declare it and that donation cannot exceed - right? so sipo wrote to him in 2019 and they said uh edelman bought a table at fundraiser event that you uh that you run um we found that it wasn't declared so can you please explain that foradker's explanation was that edelman had been reimbursed by the

individuals who are at the table so therefore it didn't count as donation exceeding €00 and none of it had to be um, none of it had to be declared because they were, h, 200 europe. um, sippo then checked with edelman, and they said, is this what happened here? edelman wrote back and said, no, actually, that's not what happened, um, and that then brought uh, something that leo verradker had said explaining a donation from them in 2022 into question as well. um, there were other undeclared donations from 2018 this that year, one of them was from uh, barrister, one them was from the attorney general, well the now attorney general uh rossa fanning and the other one was from centric health right um and they asked they wrote sipo wrote to leo saying are you satisfied now he given the same explanation for these of the donations saying they were all reimbursed so i didn't have to declare them they'd written to him saying can you explain one why addlemen are contradicting you and two you know are you

are you satisfied that the other this explanation accounts for what's happened with these other donations and he just ignored them. buse leover doesn't have to answer questions to anyone apparently he doesn't have to so he just refused to sippo as well and it's sippo as well which is completely right so he just said he just instead of engaging with them and accounting for what he done he was just like no i'm not going to answer and then they wrote to him again and um we did a story on it and he uh we asked him about it and leo veradker then uh released a statement to us saying i can confirm that i am not under investigation by sippo, which was very, i think he was trying to get get off a kind of a technical term because it was like inquiry and maybe not technically investigation or something like that response, but we we actually never. said he was under investigation, we were careful with the language because of how the the legislation is worded and we said that it was um we use words like probe and everything,

sippo is investigating, which is the language that the mainstream press use whenever sippo sticking or into shin faine's business it's always oh sippo is investigating so but can't say it about this as well that was one of the instances where the the media did pick it up and they ran with the headline and leoveradker confirms that he is not under investigation by so and there was also one journalist who's quite well known um who contacted us kind of asking for what we had to back up what was what we said in the story so uh we kind of made sure that the that we sent it to him and um he didn't do anything with it so i'm convinced that it was a uh factfinding mission sounds like good and yourself roman uh what would you say be one the biggest stories that you've worked on? um, i'd say probably my favorite story last year, it was the the nile collin story that

we did, so nile collins is a junior minister, um, he's the he's the minister of state for further education, and the first story that we did, i think was at the beginning of last year related to a planning application that he had made, a historic planning application. and uh basically on that planning application he lied and said that he was living with his parents in order to circumvent um planning rules, very strict planning rules um relating to one-off dwellings, he wanted to build a one off dwelling in limrick where he's from, and the problem was he already owned a house so he didn't have a housing need, so in order to get around that, as i said, he he basically just lied. and he said he was you know he was living with his parents, he didn't own any property and uh he got planning permission to build that house. mean, some people would say um, you know,

that there's uh, and it is quite controversial, you know, the one off housing rules, they still exist, um, and lot of people would say that you know they're problematic, and think a lot of people would um tell fibs on the applications to kind of get around these things. um, but you know, this guy is a law maker and lot of people who who do things like that would have to face consequences for it, so we ran that story and i guess he kind of managed to weazele his way out of it, um, and the media kind of ran with uh, whatever he was saying, he came into the doll and gave a statement, and you know, i think he thought that was the end of it, we did a little bit more digging, and it turned out that he - 'um his wife had purchased a parcel of land in limerick that was owned by the council and a month before the council

voted to sell that piece of land um his wife had written in to the council and said i want to buy this piece of land um and uh he voted, he was one of the people that voted, his uh phenofoil colleagues proposed the motion a council meeting, he was a'. counselor at the time and um they voted to sell the piece of land, which his wife then bought and um basically no consequences, he's still a minister, there's there is guarden investigation into it uh, well it's not, i believe it's not an investigation stage, they've said that they're doing a sculping exercise to see if any um legislation was broken, which it seems that my... have been the the local government act, which dates you have to recuse yourself um, when you know you've a potential beneficial interest, and

there's also a complaint made to the standards and public office commission, but he's still junior minister for um for further education, and there were lot of other stories that we did um on on nikollins, lot of you know, i would say... feelings um relating to himself and um yeah he hasn't really had to properly account for any of it you know and yourself one how would you view one of your bigger stories? yeah i think like i got a bit of crack out of the robert troy stories which again similar um he's another exinafall junior minister who that was back when i was was just myself and roman, it was 1 august and the doll wasn't in session at the time, which and this is another thing to take it back to irish media, you know when

this happens you know... political correspondents will call it silly season because there's nothing to write about, because because government departments, tds, ministers aren't sending press releases, like things are still happening, but just because you're not getting spoon fed stories, like which is why like typically in august, certainly down south, there was a run of years there where it was always the same thing, there were there be stories about out of control. so um yeah we fight into we covered robert troy before and you know he was the guy to you to go back to what we were saying about what the ditch you our aspirations for it and all the asked you we had first run stories about um

his property holdings, you's a multi-property landlord, making a bomb off student accomodation down in dublin, uh, we'd already publish stories like that where you know you get some reaction to those kind of stories, people go and like, oh, well, fair play to him, like kind of like, yeah, fine, like lots of other people had a problem with it, and what i find very interesting about the robert troy, series of stories was before we went, before we went to publish basically. basically roman had found that he had sold property to local authority and when you do that you have to declare it and he hadn't done that so we found this out thought it was good you know and we just started speaking to people you know and um funny enough yeah we found out that it wasn't just it wasn't just one time we done it but he done it a second time with a different local authority you

know so you're like all right okay this is this is pretty good yeah yeah and we published the first story and yeah the media down tools they were writing about out of control seagles etc etc do the first story and um funny enough actually i was um i was uh i was back home and um my mom was listening to philip outer jays and he had he had robert troy on and i said he'll hardly ask about that story like you but right enough yeah fair play to philip he asked him and robert did some answer for it and so we were like all right okay sweet and a day or two later we did the second story then you know and um then yeah it starts kind of blowing up like starts getting a little bit of heat and twitter and it's all good crack and all the rest and like all the way throughout this you know he robert troy wouldn't speak to us like we were asking him for comment and we got into this kind of um

we got into ' this kind of uh like this kind of pattern of also asking him for comment for story, him ignoring us, publishing a story and then he'd have to go to um to the mainstream press then and then go, oh actually what happened here is this, that the other, you know, and and god, i think it must have been yeah over the course of a week and and this is yeah, the one thing that to take it back to his party leader, you know meal martin who said that that we're a political organization that we're hellben. taken down the government that were you know implying that we're russian assets all that kind of stuff. one thing that michel martin and his kind can't seem to grapple with is that like over the course of that week the number of phone calls both roman and i were receiving from people in his constituency. there was one guy actually uh call us up and he said it was the best thing ever happened to west me

he's like you know i mean you know like quite regularly we'll do story about you know state body or a public figure and you now you'll get few calls afterwards or few messages but like robert troy and nile collins actually as well the nile collins one as well was funny was you know i mean the first story um oh sorry what it wasn't the first story there was another story about um a property deal um that was an anonymous email you know from someone who had been tried. their best to have this story told you know by anyone and people didn't want to know about it and like look i'll try to be as objective as possible about it like even just like we publish those stories actually funny enough i think the doll wasn't sitting either that time you know so again no onething write about um it became the biggest you know for the at least a week you know it was the biggest story in the country like you know so like if the mainstream press could even