Thread by @peter_caddle

For those wondering: Yes, well over half of the organisations listed below as supporting the #IrelandForAll march on Saturday are directly or indirectly backed by the Irish government.

However, this statistic completely fails to show how bad things really are:🧵

By my count: Over 55% of the organisations listed here either currently have or at one stage had government support in the past.

This has mostly taken the form of financial grants and donations from the Irish government (read: taxpayer), though not always.

For instance, some groups supporting the march have received support from the EU (again, read: taxpayer) rather than the Irish state directly.

Others still have benefitted from being handed platforms by the likes of county councils or state-owned broadcasters, such as RTÉ.

But what of the organisations that do not appear to be receiving state funding? Well, many of the organisations listed here do not really seem to exist in any real sense.

Many of the listed orgs only appear to consist of a few social media pages, sometimes with less than two hundred followers. Others do claim to have websites, but end up 404'ing once clicked.

Then there are the Trade Unions. Though not funded by the taxpayer, these groups are still using funds from public membership to support their campaigning. It seems unclear to me whether such campaigns actually have the support of the working class these unions represent though.

Overall, it appears clear to me that there is nothing "grassroots" about what is happening here. So many of these groups have the backing (often financial) of the state, with those that do not in many cases representing little more than a logo and a Twitter profile.

Meanwhile, time and time again polling appears to show that the Irish public has had enough with the government's open borders experiment.

How can this government expenditure be justified when it goes against the views of the vast majority of Irish people?

Regardless, with this kind of financial and social backing from the state, it appears like the normal people of East Wall and beyond have their work cut out for them. The next few months and years will be interesting indeed.