'What you’re doing is playing with somebody’s life, destroying a reputation'
Twitter Fáil November And The Tweets Against Defamation Nolan Facebook For Moya Postings O'rourke, Court North Brought A Last Fianna Action Over Former And The For Td Frank Kildare Picture: High
O’Rourke was a sitting Fianna Fáil TD for Kildare North, having been first elected in 2016. The leaflet, he was told, had been dropped through letterboxes in a housing estate the night before the election. It was typed out in large lettering on an A4 page.
The text went as follows: “Local General Election candidate Frank O’Rourke is nothing but a fraud, a bully and a cheat. He has treated his wife and daughter like dirt. He has a love child with one woman and also having a second affair with another. He left his wife and daughter with no money. She is now struggling to pay bills. Please consider this before casting your vote.”
The text was similar to postings on Facebook in the week before the election. The damaging allegations also appeared on Twitter on the day of the election from a highly unusual account.
O’Rourke lost his seat in the 2020 general election. Last November, he brought a High Court action for defamation against Twitter and Facebook over the postings and tweets. The action had uncovered some aspects to what went on, but others remain a mystery.
He believes the allegations began as a personal campaign against him and was spotted by somebody or some entity who decided to use it to damage him at the election.
What has been established is that one individual, a minor political activist who says he is not a member of any party, tweeted the allegations on election day. There are also sample leaflets. It remains unclear how widespread the leaflets were distributed, although O’Rourke believes it was an organised campaign, which took place just ahead of the election, leaving him with little time to rebut the allegations.
“On the day before the election, we were canvassing in Celbridge and in one estate it came up on four doors with members of my team. It was on the basis: ‘Oh, we’ve seen it on social media about Frank but tell him we know it’s not true and he has our support’.
“That was the first time I got a sense that it was an issue.”
O’Rourke is a native of Leitrim. He moved to Celbridge in his 20s and worked in business, rising to head a tar and bitumen company. He got married and has a daughter.
Around 2005, he began actively working with the Fianna Fáil cumann in Celbridge. In 2010, a seat on Kildare County Council became available when sitting councillor Paul Kelly was appointed a judge. O’Rourke was co-opted onto the council.
In 2014, he held the seat in the local elections, topping the poll in the Celbridge Leixlip area. In 2016, he was elected to the Dáil for the Kildare North constituency on what was a good day out for his party.
In the Dáil, O’Rourke was relatively quiet on national issues, although he points out he brought forward four pieces of legislation. He was also opposed to the repeal of the Eighth Amendment in the 2018 referendum.
Like most TDs, he was assiduous in looking after his seat.
“I was known as a worker but not just in the constituency,” he says.
“My colleagues in the Dáil would have recognised that too.”
The year before the 2020 election was tough for him personally.
“My mother had been very unwell so I was up and down to Leitrim helping my brothers and sisters to care for her at home. She died in January 2019.
“Within a month, I had to leave the family home. My marriage had got into difficulties from December 2017 and we tried to manage it but there comes to a point where it’s no longer sustainable.
“So I had to find somewhere to rent in Celbridge. I have a daughter and unfortunately that negatively impacted on that relationship.”
Some months after he left the family home, a story was circulating that cast O’Rourke in a very poor light.
“I got feedback from people close to me that there was a story being created. People confronted me during summer of 2019 and asked me was it true and I put it factually to them that it was not true.
“In relation to leaving my wife destitute, I showed people my personal accounts to show that was not the case and that I was paying the mortgage on the family home. I have always done the right thing. There was no issue with that.
“It is acknowledged that the marriage broke down for natural reasons and there was nothing untoward.”
The false stories dissipated by autumn 2019.
A few months later, the next general election hove into view. The pundits had him retaining his seat, although 2020 was an election that the pundits — and the political parties — called all wrong. On Virgin Media’s Show, it was suggested O’Rourke would top the poll in his constituency.
The Facebook post appeared about a week before the election. A key account in disseminating it was run by a ‘Mary Doyle’, who has not been identified, despite orders from the High Court. Facebook says it is not possible to identify the owner or originator of that account.
All of this was going on in cyberspace, while O’Rourke was busy on the doorsteps. Before the eve of the election, he had no idea that it was feeding through to voters.
The IP address for the account at the time of the posting was City Hall in Dublin city centre. However, the High Court was told earlier this year that this may not have been a “true” address as, the court was told, the same account “appeared to be logged in and logged out of, minutes apart, from a wide array of IP addressed all over the country”.
The day before the election, “the account was logged in at an IP address in Limerick and 26 minutes later logged in at Dublin’s City Hall. On another day, there was a log-in again in Dublin but 17 minutes later the log-in is in Donegal,” the court was told.
The activity is highly unusual. In the first instance, Twitter accounts are generally not logged in and out of on such a frequent basis. Secondly, bar the account holder flying on a broomstick, it is difficult to envisage one individual as being in control of the account. The only other explanation is that the account holder was using virtual private network (VPN) technology, which can disguise the physical location from which a Twitter account is activated.
As a result of O’Rourke’s High Court action, Twitter agreed to provide details of the account holder. His name is Andrew Cronnolly, with an address at 19 Tamarisk Lawn, Kilnamanagh, Dublin 24. He says he was the sole operator of the account, which was closed some months after the election.
Speaking to the earlier this year, Mr Cronnolly said he saw the posting on Frank O’Rourke on Facebook and took some of that to form the text of his tweet. He has no explanation for the highly unusual activity of the account around the country.
“I was in City Hall three years ago,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Limerick. I was in Donegal over 10 years ago.”
He said he “hadn’t a clue” about VPNs and that he was the sole operator of the account.
“I’m not a member of any political party,” he said. “In general, I would have voted left, transferred left way at the last election. To be honest with you, I’d never heard of him [Frank O’Rourke] ahead of the post.”
Mr Cronnolly is now joined with Twitter and Facebook in O’Rourke’s defamation action.
Despite O’Rourke losing his seat, there was nothing terribly out of the ordinary in the election result in Kildare North. Three of the sitting TDs, James Lawless (Fianna Fáil), Catherine Murphy (Social Democrats), and Bernard Durkan (Fine Gael), retained their seats. The fourth seat went to Sinn Féin’s Réada Cronin, who had been a member of Kildare County Council until 2019.
On a day when there was a major electoral surge for Sinn Féin, it would have been unusual if Cronin hadn’t been elected. It would also have been a rare success if Fianna Fáil had retained two seats on a bad day out for the party.
O’Rourke is not claiming his seat went to anybody in particular, but he does offer an analysis about how he believes the false stories damaged him.
“I got a statistical analysis done and my vote in Celbridge, my home base, and [nearby] Straffan, dropped by 20% and that was the immediate area that had been focused against me in this campaign. I would have been expected to at least hold my vote or maybe increase it by 10% or 15% in Celbridge, which hadn’t had a TD in the town for 35 years before I’d been elected.
“Outside of there, my vote didn’t stay static but actually increased in some places. It reflected my work ethic. It’s very evident that the lie being told had its worst effect on my home base. The Facebook page that hosted the lie was based in Celbridge.
“Even though I ended up getting much the overall same vote as I did in 2016, it wasn’t enough.”
In the days after the election, a political colleague phoned and told O’Rourke he had a copy of the leaflet dropped to a house in Celbridge on the eve of the election. Later, more copies were brought to his attention, which, he says, came from houses in Leixlip and Maynooth.
Around the same time, he received a number of anonymous letters which he describes as “a hate campaign”. He made a complaint to the gardaí about that, the leaflets, and the online postings but there has as of yet been no outcome to the investigation.
The understands the gardaí are following a definite line of inquiry as to the origin of the anonymous letters but not the leaflets.
O’Rourke said he had no choice but to go to court to clear his name.
“What you’re doing is playing with somebody’s life, destroying a reputation and the consequences can be substantial. I had to spend a huge sum of money to redeem my reputation and that is fundamentally wrong.
“Twitter co-operated with me but Facebook had us in the High Court six or seven times. It’s not a huge issue for them but it was significant for me at a time when I had no work.”
Has the experience turned O’Rourke off any future attempts to re-enter public life?
“I would never say no but that’s a decision I make when the time comes and with the organisation if they still want you and it you still want it. But I would never close the door. I felt and still do believe that I would be representing Kildare North only for an orchestrated campaign against me.”