Gemma O'Doherty

Born in England in 1947, he died of motor neurone disease in January 2015, aged 67; O'Doherty was his second wife.

Gemma O'Doherty (born 24 August 1968) is an Irish far-right activist and conspiracy theorist.

O'Doherty joined the Irish Independent in 1995 as a staff writer, later becoming Chief Features Writer.

However, her highest-profile work concerned her reporting on Ireland's criminal justice system and on police corruption in the Garda Síochána.

In 2010, O'Doherty wrote an article highlighting issues in the investigation into the 1985 death of a priest, Niall Molloy, after a society wedding in County Offaly that included senior Irish political figures, and the collapse of the subsequent manslaughter trial.

Her work led to the reopening of the case.

According to O'Doherty, her research had "exposed a cover-up of staggering proportions involving several institutions of the State and the Catholic Church."

She began her career as a staff writer for the Irish Independent, contributing articles on travel, the criminal justice system and corruption, but was dismissed in 2013.

In 2013, Roy Greenslade in The Guardian, at the time she was fired from the Irish Independent, described her as "one of Ireland's leading investigative journalists", but mentioned concerns over the ethics of her newsgathering methods.

In April 2013, while investigating the penalty points cancellation scandal, O'Doherty sought to question Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan about the quashing of his own speeding points and called to his private home at approximately 10pm in order to do so, speaking to Callinan's wife.

In August 2013, Doherty was fired from the Irish Independent and, though the newspaper rejected any links between the events, editor-in-chief Stephen Rae branded her as a "rogue reporter" for approaching the commissioner without editorial permission.

The Irish National Union of Journalists condemned the dismissal as unfair.

O'Doherty lodged a complaint about her dismissal with the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT), which was resolved in 2014 with Independent News & Media plc tendering an apology and paying her an undisclosed sum.

Similarly, she won a defamation case against the Irish Independent at the High Court.

As part of the apology, Independent Newspapers stated that it wished to "acknowledge the exceptional work of multi-award winning investigative journalist Gemma O'Doherty for the Irish Independent during the course of a lengthy career".

After the Irish Independent, O'Doherty worked freelance, publicly criticising "the cosy cartel that exists between the press, power and the police in this country".

In 2015, a Garda review of the case concluded that the original Garda investigation was correctly concluded.

In 2016, she produced a documentary, Mary Boyle: The Untold Story, about the disappearance of a child in 1977, which was published on YouTube.

The disappearance of Mary Boyle is the longest running missing child case in Ireland, and the documentary implies political interference in the investigation.

It led to O'Doherty being sued for defamation by Fianna Fáil politician Sean McEniff for damages of €75,000.

In late 2017, O'Doherty wrote an article, published by Village magazine, concerning allegations of long-term child sexual abuse in Terenure College, Dublin, and followed it up in early 2018 with allegations that the Gardaí did not act on information they had about issues regarding the college's rugby coach, John McClean.

A year later, McClean was formally charged with indecently assaulting nine students in Terenure College over a 17-year period.

She attempted to run as a candidate in the 2018 Irish presidential election, but failed to secure the minimum qualifying number of nominations required to be added to the ballot.

In 2018, another Irish journalist, Michael Clifford, questioned the impact of her investigative work and her use of "theories of conspiracy".

O'Doherty was unsuccessful in the 2019 European Parliament election in Ireland, receiving 1.85% of first preference votes in the Dublin constituency.

She has been banned from YouTube since July 2019 for violations of its policies on hate speech.

Gemma O'Doherty was born in Ranelagh in Dublin, to Hubert O'Doherty, a pharmacist, and his wife Sheila.

O'Doherty has a BA in Politics and an MA in Equality Studies from University College Dublin.

She was a teacher before becoming a journalist, and lived in Spain for a number of years.

She is the widow of the editor of the Irish Independent's Sunday Review, Peter Carvosso.

In 2019, after McEniff's death, a judge granted his estate leave to continue the case.

In August 2019, Village published an editorial on O'Doherty and her relationship with the magazine.

It described her as "the It girl for Irish extremism: racism, anti-Islamism, homophobia and transphobia".

It defended her previous freelance work for the magazine, saying "O'Doherty's politics were not offensive until some time after Village published its last piece by her" and concluded by stating that "Once O'Doherty revealed herself as racist she was no longer welcome in these pages".

In August 2021, O'Doherty and John Waters launched a freesheet newspaper titled The Irish Light, largely consisting of anti-vaccine propaganda and other conspiracy theories.

It is run in conjunction with The Light, a UK publication, and reprints much of the UK version's articles.

In December 2022, Edel Campbell, the mother of Diego Gilsenan, a minor who had died by suicide, called for the removal of her son's image, and that of 41 other people, from the cover of The Irish Light.

Their images had been used without permission in videos posted online by O'Doherty, and in a cover story of the freesheet, which linked their deaths to the Covid vaccine.

She unsuccessfully ran in the 2020 Irish general election receiving just under 2% of first preference votes.

Her views on a range of subjects have led to a series of legal actions and calls for tightening of hate-crime legislation.