hello, i'm sean murray, and this is the conversation, where we take an alternative. at political events and current affairs through anaries 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 speak to my next guest, let's get a quick overview on this. topic.

of so let's introduce today's guest, joining me today is on mcneal, paulie doile and roman shorthall. from the tits: 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 ditch? um, the ditch, suppose, is an online investigative uh journalism website, um, we set up about three years ago, suppose we felt that there was a gap on the market for um, maybe a bit more focus on investigative journalism, and we didn't really know exactly um you know how we were going to go about it, but we knew that we wanted to to focus uh soly 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, story about leo verradker 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 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've you 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 you like undeclared properties all the rest and um we kind of thought yeah fuck it why not let's go and give it a go and you know 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 of was during covid and mihal martin the most decent man in ireland as we all know had you know during a time when there were very strict prohibitions on the kind of events you could hold and attend he attended a

prohibited event down in corque that was just so happened to be held in honor of his father uh patty 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 attending garda to go and take her mask off for a 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 the cork echo had actually covered this event and like no like isn't meal martin great and kind of like really and um and look myself and roman we kind of talked about this since you know and that was the first story that we publish 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 you know 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 i do think like the irish times or independent had published that story, i think meal martin would have been in serious serious danger. we kind of, you know, we kind of were hurt a little bit by the fact that you know people are 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 ramped it up a we bit, and now paulie's come on board the last half year or so like, so hopefully only... bigger and better things, that's it, then speaking yourself, paulie, i 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, how successful the guys had been, just the two of them, um, at you, 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 the run these kinds of stories and um yeah and and has it been because i know when you when you crack that we world it's a seam and i've seen it in film how's the relationship between the legs of 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, you know, 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've like i've got to say on that like always kind of like it when you get you know a little bit of love recognition from an unexpected source you know like where you know sometimes yeah i would agree with lot of what paulie 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 summer or was it kind of late spring when we had published all these stories about nile collins, meal martin gets up on the doll, goes in 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 and did an interview with rte after that, uh, and it was kind of like it was guy called justin murphy um who you know i kind of knew what i was kind of getting my seven for like which is fine but like he kind of used 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 and i had 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, a 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 call him that that weekend, um, he he called it out for what it was, 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 that day to be more fitting of someone like putin, you know, in that it was attack on the free. so i always enjoy 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, you know, a good old sunday independent day, i'm sure some of you haven't had the misfortune have been called a troubles nac by the sunday independent, who was that in the, that's for another day, was that rde isn't isn't a... organization though, it's completely a political, 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 qu, 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... objects 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 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 you know they don't really want to hear from us that's partful the course is your well known i woman 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 and it's a proposed hate speech um act that is it's working its way through the arctus at the moment, it's it's it's gone through the doll and it's to come before the channed, it's um what can you say about it, it's you know it's in it's in in in incredibly far reaching it effectively um the parts that i'd be most worried about are the the powers that it would give the gardi 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... to combat transphobic hate crime right, and as part of that it would empower

the guardy to investigate these potential crimes, but the guards are an organization that shelved and 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 and that... you know under this policy uh guards would have been possibly subject um to disciplinary measures if they misgendered their colleagues the guards say oh not 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 frustrating about it is the fact that the loudest opponents of this bill are gen from the right and 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 chant is beyond the pale and they've been in hysterics over that but nowher um now opposing this bill on the grounds of they, as they would say free speech, that's another kind of one that grinds my years away, but i always kind of find when irish people talk about free speech, that to me is a bit of an americanism, like i 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 rights 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 paulie and roman have have been saying about this kind of um, whatever you want to call it, a toothlessness or kind of an impotance of the irish establishment media, i think it's a legacy of section 31. where you know when well 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 uh quite prodigiously was connor cruzan a man who later joined the uk unionist party like

um but you could see like throughout the course of section 31 you are... 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 maxjifan wasn't broadcast over the airwaves this drove government mad and then they kind of clamped down on it again the end result of this was government telling journalists what they can and can't publish, and like yeah, they were act of resistance along the way, but broadly speaking, these guys are said, oh yeah, cool, like if ifrian 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 cruzen a west brist who can you call, and he

was so to me it's just kind of crazy that anyone who considers themselves broadly. passive could support this build, but then but then you'll see people then like clare burn um rte presenter uh she was questioning um she was interviewing um liam harrick from the iris council for civil liberties and one the lines of questioning that she put to him was oh well donald trump jr and elon musk opposes are you happy to be in their corner and it's just like 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

like ireland so get into the meet on the bones um stop you pauly, what uh, for the audience is sick, tell us about some of the the big catches that you've had? um, well, 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 she explained that so under the law if you receive donation from an individual that's or company over 600 euro you have to declare it and that donation cannot exceed um euro right, so sipo wrote to him in 2019 and they said uh edelman bought a table a fundraiser event that you uh that you ran um we found that it wasn't declared so can you please explain that for radker'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 euro and none of it

had to be um none of it had to be declared because they were you know h 200 europe um sipo 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 varadker 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. um and they asked, they wrote sippo wrote to leo saying, are you satisfied? now he given the same explanation for these were 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 to 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 right, buse leover doesn't have to answer questions to anyone apparently, he doesn't have to, so he just refused to... 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 sipo which was very i think he was trying to get get ' 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 word it 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 fain's business it's always oh sipo 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 le overadker 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 that so i'm convinced that it was a uh fact finding mission sounds laged and yourself roman uh what would you say would be one of the biggest stories that you have worked on um i'd say probably my favorite story last year was the the nile collins story that we did, so nile collins is a junior minister, um, he's the so 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 the 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, he was living with his parents, he didn't own any property and... 'and 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 their 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 wesel his way out of it 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 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 guard 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 might have been the the local government act, which states you have to recuse yourself um you now you've a potential beneficial interest and um there's also a complaint made to the standards and public office commission, but

uh he's still junior minister for um for further education and there were lot of other stories that we did um on on nile colons, lot of you know i would say dodgy dealings um you know uh relating to himself and um yeah... hasn't really had to properly account for any of it, you know, and your cell phone, how would you view one of your bigger stories? yeah, i think like - i got a bit of crack out the robert troy stories, which again similar, um, he's another ex finfall junior minister who that was back when it 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, when this happens, you know, political correspondants 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'd be stories about out of control seaggls every august like clockwork, like and you'd have like some headbanger senator you know going like, 'oh the seagles are out of control in dublin, like we have to do something about this, this is like like every year like you, so um, yeah, we fight into, we covered robert troy before, and he was the guy to you, to go back to what we were saying about you, what the ditch, our aspirations for it and all the rest, you know, we had first run stories about um, his property holdings, you he's a multiproperty landlord, making a bomb off

student accomodation down in dub and uh we'd already publish stories like that where you know you get some reaction that to those kind of stories people going like oh well and fair play to him like kind of like yeah fine like lots of other people had a problem with it you know and what a found 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 he done it but he done it a second time with a different local authority you know so like all right okay this is this is pretty good yeah and we published the first story and yeah the media

down tools, they were writing about out of control eagles 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 out and he had he had robert troy on and he'll hardly ask about that story like you but right enough yeah fair play to philipp he asked him and robert had some answer for it you know and we're 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 in twitter and it's all good crack and all the rest, and like all the way throughout this, 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 them 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 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 mial martin who said that that we're a political organization that we're hellbent and taken down the government that were you know implying that we're russian assets all that kind of stuff. one thing that michael 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 you know like there was one guy actually uh called us up and he said it was the best thing ever happened to us 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 know you'll get few calls afterwards or few messages, but like robert troy and nile collins actually as well, the nail collins one as well was funny was you know, i mean the first story um or sorry, 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 trying their best to have this story told you by anyone and people didn't want to know about... it you know and like look i'll try to be as objective as possible about it like you 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 one had anything to write about um it became the biggest you know for the at least a week you know was the biggest story in the country like you know so like if the mainstream press could even just see that that like you know there's an appetite for this kind of stuff and that people want to read this kind of stuff like but