Hugh Fagan is in Wexford District Court, in the south-east of Ireland, charged with a public order offence over his homemade signs. Rebel News is covering it as it happens - live-tweeting from inside and filming outside. Follow along for updates below or directly on X.

Hugh has refused to plead guilty. His barrister, Laoise de Brún, and solicitor, Padraig Langsch - the same legal team defending Kirk Loco in Bray - will fight the charge in open court. Hugh still may not know exactly what he's accused of: when asked which of his seven signs he was charged over, Hugh said police hadn't told him, and that he'd find out in court.

Hugh lives in Wexford, a tourist town of cobbled streets, coffee shops and a medieval abbey. Most days he walks four blocks from his house to the town square and sits on a bench with seven handmade signs propped up around him.

He wears headphones. He doesn't shout. He doesn't hand out leaflets or ask anyone for anything. He isn't a member of any party. If you want to talk, he takes the headphones off and talks to you. If you don't, he just sits there.

It started in May of last year. Hugh was walking past a church near the Tesco on a Sunday as a funeral was coming out, the casket being put into the hearse, and a beggar was lying across the entrance. He said to himself, enough is enough. The next week he was in the square with two signs. Now there are seven - about mass immigration, churches being burned across Europe, the safety of women and children, and the European Union.

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For that, the Guards get called on him almost every week. People walk up and scream "racist" and "fascist" in his face. Pro-Palestine activists have told him "nobody wants you here." Tourists have stood over him waiting for him to be arrested.

None of those people have been charged with anything. The only person charged is the man sitting quietly on the bench - a man who told Rebel News he has lived in four countries and never so much as had a parking ticket.

"We're living in the upside down at the moment," Hugh said. "What's true is not true anymore."

"There is no hate speech in a free society, there's just speech," he told local media when Gardaí confronted him in the square. "It's okay to be offended."

The signs are blunt, and Rebel News doesn't agree with every word. But that's the point of freedom of speech: it's the gift you give your opponents if you want it for yourself.

This is the second of two trials Rebel News is covering in Ireland in a matter of days. On October 23 Rebel News was in Bray for Kirk Loco's 'fake news' trial, prosecuted under a Troubles-era law for a single retweet. One man for a tweet, one man for cardboard. If the state can shut up a quiet man with signs in a tourist town, it can shut up anyone.

Hugh doesn’t have a media company behind him. He doesn’t have a party. He has a bench and some signs, and now he has us. You don’t have to agree with what he says to agree that he has the right to say it — and if the police are prosecuting him, he has the right to a good lawyer. If you can help pay for that lawyer, please go to IrishFreeSpeech.com.