Irish Free Speech
Help fight for free speech in Ireland!
Irish Free Speech
Help fight for free speech in Ireland!
Ireland is prosecuting two men for what they said. Ezra Levant is going back for both trials.
This week, Ezra Levant flies back to Ireland for two court dates in one trip: Kirk Loco's hearing in Bray on Friday, October 23, and Hugh Fagan's trial in Wexford on Tuesday, October 27. One man is charged over a tweet. The other is charged over cardboard signs. They have the same lawyers, and Rebel News supporters are paying for them.
IrishFreeSpeech.com pays for the lawyers of ordinary Irish people who are prosecuted for words, not for violence or threats. This week it also pays to get Ezra into both courtrooms and onto the streets of both towns to talk to the people who live there. You don't have to agree with Hugh or Kirk to agree that they have the right to speak, and that if the state is prosecuting them, they have the right to a good lawyer.
Ezra is going back to Ireland this week
Ezra has been to Ireland three times for these cases. This time he is travelling alone, without a videographer, to keep the costs down. He will be inside Bray District Court on Friday and inside Wexford District Court the following Tuesday, live-tweeting from the public gallery and filming his own reports outside the courthouse doors. In between, he'll be on the streets of Wexford and Bray asking locals what they make of a government that charges one neighbour for a sign and another for a tweet. He'll file a report the same day as each hearing, and every one of them will be posted at the bottom of this page.
Hugh Fagan: charged for his signs
Hugh Fagan is not a politician, an activist or a journalist. He's a man from Wexford, a pretty tourist town in the south-east of Ireland, who got fed up and started walking down to the town square most days to sit on a bench with seven homemade signs propped up around him. They're about mass immigration, church burnings across Europe, and the safety of women and children.
He wears headphones. He doesn't shout, he doesn't hand out leaflets, and he doesn't belong to any party. If you want to talk to him, he takes the headphones off and talks to you. If you don't, he just sits there.
For that, a summons came in the post. Hugh is charged with a public order offence. When Ezra sat with him in the square this spring (that's the interview at the top of this page), Hugh said the Guards hadn't even told him which sign he was being charged over. "We're living in the upside down at the moment," he told Ezra. "What's true is not true anymore."
The Guards get called on him almost every week. People scream "racist" and "fascist" in his face. Buskers and activists have told him to leave. None of them have ever been charged with anything. Only the quiet man on the bench has.
His signs are blunt. Ezra says on camera that he doesn't agree with every word. But Hugh isn't calling for violence and he isn't blocking anyone's way. He's a man in his own hometown, in silence, saying what he thinks on a piece of cardboard. If the Irish state can shut him up, it can shut up anyone.
Hugh's trial is Tuesday, October 27, 2026, at Wexford District Court. Ezra will be in the courtroom.
Kirk Loco: charged for a tweet
Kirk Loco is an ordinary Irish citizen who reposted a public warning from a neighbourhood group: a migrant man had exposed himself on a bus full of passengers, including a 14-year-old girl. The bus driver stopped the bus. There were witnesses. It was on CCTV. Kirk shared the warning so other people would know.
The migrant wasn't charged. Kirk was. He is the first and only person ever charged under Ireland's so-called "fake news" law, Section 12A of the Criminal Justice Act, 1976, a statute passed during the Troubles to fight terrorism, not to police tweets. The government calls his post "misinformation." Instead of debating it, they chose to prosecute one man and make an example of him.
Ezra has been to Bray twice for Kirk's hearings. Earlier this year the judge lifted a bail condition that had banned Kirk from attending any protest, anywhere in Ireland. But the court refused to order the Gardaí to hand over the bus CCTV and the names of the witnesses. A conviction could mean real prison time.
Kirk's next hearing is Friday, October 23, 2026, at Bray District Court. Ezra will be there first.
The legal team
Ireland's legal aid system pushes defendants to plead guilty and move on. In a political case, pleading guilty means surrendering your beliefs. Both men have refused, and Rebel News promised them we would ask our audience to help pay for lawyers willing to fight these cases on principle, in open court.
Hugh and Kirk are represented by the same team: Laoise de Brún BL, a Dublin barrister, and Padraig Langsch, a solicitor. Their fee for Hugh's case is 10,000 euros, all in. Kirk's defence is ongoing, and because a conviction could mean prison, he needs senior counsel rather than the bare minimum legal aid would give him.
What your donation pays for
Donations on this page pay for the lawyers, meaning the balance of Hugh's 10,000-euro fee and Kirk's ongoing defence, and for the cost of getting Ezra to both courtrooms: an economy flight to Dublin, a modest hotel and the trips down to Wexford and Bray, so about 2,000-euro all in. If there is a surplus, Rebel News applies it to other free speech cases in Ireland.
Rebel News is an independent news company based in Canada. We don't take a cent of government money — we're funded entirely by our viewers — and for years we've crowdfunded lawyers for ordinary people prosecuted for their speech, in Canada, Britain and now Ireland. The big Irish media cheer these prosecutions on, and nobody in Ireland is pushing back in an organized way. So we are. Can you please help?
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