A shocking motorway crash that left five boys dead and four others in hospital raised troubling questions linked by three contemporary concerns: road safety, youth crime and the warping effects of social media.
The five boys were in a BMW that was evading gardaí by recklessly driving the wrong way on the M9 in Co Kildare in the early hours of last Sunday. They died when the car hit a Hyundai carrying four innocent people from Carlow on their way to catch a flight at Dublin Airport. The four – three sisters and a seven-year-old boy – survived but with serious injuries.
Two of the five teenagers killed in the M9 motorway crash were regarded by gardaí as being among the most prolific and problematic so-called joyriders in the State, Conor Lally reports. Lally also has a timeline of the events of that night, while he and Kitty Holland have produced revealing profiles of the five teenagers.
An Garda Síochána says it will give its members more vehicle pursuit training, but that on its own will do little to stem the growing problem; joyriders know, as we all do, that gardaí cannot chase them against traffic on a motorway. Minister for Justice Jim O’Callaghan has broached making it an offence to drive the wrong way on a motorway. That gesture meets the immediate political need for Government to be seen to be doing something.
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But as with any difficult problem, there is not one cause but many. To fix it, as Harry McGee observes, will require several things to happen. A more meaningful move, our editorial argues, would be to hold accountable the publishers who disseminate the videos made by the perpetrators of these crimes. Social media platforms TikTok, Meta and Snapchat said they would remove videos that breach their rules. “Such statements deserve scepticism,” the editorial suggests. “None of these companies is noted for candour, and their assurances have a well-rehearsed quality.” As we reported elsewhere, videos of similar criminality were still accessible in the days after the crash. TikTok has declined to appear before the Oireachtas media committee, citing the ongoing official inquiries.
Ireland’s media regulator, Coimisiún na Meán, has a role to play in ensuring these publishers promptly remove content that breaches their codes of conduct. But swift takedowns are only part of the story.
“The point of these platforms is not that anyone can upload content but that it reaches the feeds of millions who never sought it. These are precision-tooled engines of amplification, tuned to gauge virality and hold attention. The problem is not the upload. It is that when the algorithm amplifies a video, the company becomes not a neutral host but an active participant, complicit in the harm that follows.”
So the problem is much more fundamental: it is about product design. That regulatory task falls to the European Commission, but it has to date been slow to act; no platform has yet been forced to change the core features that decide who sees what.
The news industry has changed beyond recognition over the past two decades, but some things never change. Our basic unit of currency remains the exclusive news story. It’s what reporters and their editors value most, and their frequency is one important way that we measure the vitality of any news organisation.
We broke some strong stories this week. Among them was Shauna Bowers’s report that an Irish doctor who was jailed in the UK last week for sexually assaulting two patients worked in a centre for people with intellectual disabilities in north Dublin for 22 years. Also this week, Ronald Quinlan broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s billionaire chief executive, and his wife Priscilla Chan have bought Strancally Castle in Co Waterford. And Mark Tighe had the story about John Kelly, a close aide to Tánaiste Simon Harris, who deleted his social media accounts after we asked him about a series of provocative social media posts. He criticised teachers as work-shy, described the public as “racist”, called Donald Trump a “moron” and said Britain’s Prince Harry was a “snowflake”. Harris, uncharacteristically, had nothing to say when contacted for comment.
Several other pieces caught my eye in this weekend’s line-up. As part of our week-long series on Europe’s borders, Sally Hayden joined a rescue flight in the southern Mediterranean and writes a deeply-researched feature on one of the EU’s most dangerous migration routes.
I enjoyed Denis Walsh’s perceptive report from Doonbeg, where Donald Trump’s hotel will soon host the Irish Open. It’s a useful primer in the history of the hotel and gives voice to a local community that has established a symbiotic if not always comfortable relationship with the US president and a property that has lifted the fortunes of the Co Clare village.
More than a week after the Irish team made history at the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, Irish track-and-field is still giving us some great stories. Ian O’Riordan’s piece on how elite athletes can struggle to make a living from it contains some eye-opening facts and figures. One of his interviewees is the admirably straight-talking middle-distance runner Cathal Doyle, who points out that his €18,000 annual grant from the State is taxed. “Complete bullshit,” he thinks.
Fans of Irish soccer will know of Georgie Kelly, a big forward who plays at Carlisle in the fifth tier of English football. He is also the partner of Kate O’Connor, Ireland’s star heptathlete. This lovely interview by Gavin Cummiskey, in which Kelly talks as much about O’Connor as he does about himself, will make you think even more highly of both of them.
Finally, we have strong interviews with Paul Howard, author of a new satirical novel about Irish unification; the actor Siobhán McSweeney; and the writer Róisín Kiberd. If you’re going to Electric Picnic, our guide tells you what acts you should make sure to see.
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