Galway West

Catherine Aradagh is the Minister of State in the Department of Justice, Home Affairs and Funifal TD for Dublin South Central.

Mairead Farrell is a Sinn Féin TD for Galway West and South Mayo.

And George Lawler is a Labour TD for Wexford.

You're all very welcome indeed to the programme.

She has a new documentary called Deep Fake Ireland, and for her, this is personal.

In 2024, she'd been selected to run in the constituency of Galway West in the general election.

While I was on the campaign trail, I got a phone call from a member of the team that was working around me to say it had been brought to their attention that there was a pornographic deep fake image of me circulating on phones in the area.

area.And I'll be honest, I didn't know such a thing could be done, and I really didn't believe that somebody would do it to me.

Uh, 32.

Joining me on the panel tonight is John Connolly, a TD with Fianna Fáil in Galway West.

Mary Regan is political editor with the Irish Independent.

Conor Sheehan is a TD with Labour in, uh, Limerick.

will you? Because in case they forgot, most people won't.

But your personal experience, you ran for the Dáil in the last election in your home constituency of Galway West.

Tell us about your experience.

What did happen to you?

So, as you said, I was selected to stand in the Galway West constituency in the general election of 2024.

And while I was on the campaign trail, I got a phone call from a member of the team that was working around me to say it had been brought to their attention that there was a pornographic deep fake image of me circulating on phones in the area.

And I'll be honest, I didn't know such a thing could be done.

We now have 11 TDs, two senators, 55 councilors, and of course an MEP, and we won back a seat in the European Parliament with the election of Aoife O'Reardon in 2024 for the first time in a decade.

In the most recent by-elections, we saw our candidate in Galway West-

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And I think it's unacceptable that we're using Shannon Airport to traffic American soldiers to wars all over the world

Since then, at various times, she has castigated the man, again, speaking as the TD for Galway West.

Uh, she's described him as volatile.

She said he's acted like a bully.