Athenry News & Views Summer 2026

Summer 2026

Primary School Boy’s Team winners of Cumann na mBunscoil Cup

Donnacha Cahill’s exhibition at the the West of the River Gallery/Cafe

Primary School Girl’s Team winners of Cumann na mBunscoil Cup

Don’t be Manipulated

By: Marie Curran

Years ago, while in school, an ex-member of a cult demonstrated how easy it is to be manipulated. Asking an extroverted student to leave the room to run an errand, the man shared his plan with the rest of us. He was going to convince the girl the capital of France was Rome and not Paris. When the girl returned, the man asked, “What’s the capital of France?” Picking out this girl, she answered correctly. And yet he told her she was wrong. Dismayed, she doubled down on her answer, whilst the rest of us told her she was incorrect. It took less than five minutes to convince the intelligent girl the incorrect answer was in

fact correct. In today’s world, it’s never been easier to be manipulated. In late April, research carried out by the Hope and Courage Institute found 75% of interactions on social media pertaining to be from people from Ireland, were in fact from outside the country and attached to far-right movements. Since the 2008 recession we’ve endured crisis after crisis, our pockets have been squeezed thin and people are angry and want to lay blame. It’s easy to point to one entity in society, like someone in Salem calling “Witch”, but like many issues, our issues regarding the housing and homeless crisis, and the cost-of-living crisis were

not caused by migrants or people fleeing wars. We’ve had successive government failings. For example, during the Celtic Tiger, the government of that day stopped building social housing while it also sold off a multitude of social housing, thinking we were all on a housing gravy train, never imagining what the 2008 recession would do to people. We are tired and we are hurting, but we still need to carry out our own fact checking before calling “Witch”.

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