Politics.ie
Type of site | discussion boards |
|---|---|
| Available in | English, Irish |
| Owner | David Cochrane |
| URL | http://www.politics.ie |
Poltics.ie is one of Ireland's main internet discussion forums. It is owned by David Cochrane, a former Progressive Democrats activist, and current communications director for the lobby group Libertas.[1][2] Its servers are currently located in the Unied States in order to protect the owner of the site from legal action[3], following threats of the same from legal representatives of the Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern over claims made about the prime minister and the Mahon Tribunal made on the site which were claimed to be "grossly defamatory".
The site's membership include political activists across the political spectrum, politicians, journalists, and people in the media. While contributors are anonymous, a number of prominent individuals, including Senator Dan Boyle of the Green Party and former Senator Colm O'Gorman of the Progressive Democrats (now head of Amnesty International in Ireland), confirmed their identities as contributors to the site.
The site made national headlines when the owner claimed to have inside information that a fire at the hotel of Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern's hotel, when he visited the United States, was in fact not a fire at all but a fire alarm set off by a drunken member of Ahern's entourage. The claim received extensive media coverage, but the claim was ridiculed both by the Irish government and by the Irish media who had attended the visit to the US.
Politics.ie achieved 1,000,000 posts on the 19th of June 2008 [4].