A trip to Enda Kenny country with candidate Stephen Kerr

Battling for a seat in Castlebar, Co Mayo

A still from a video of Castlebar LEA candidate Stephen Kerr of the Irish Inquiry, meeting with former Taoiseach Enda Kenny in Castlebar on Sunday

We are on the campaign trail in Enda Kenny country, in the parish of Islandeady, on the outskirts of Castlebar, Co Mayo. The old Kenny family home is close by, but sits empty now. Fine Gael support around here is on the floor.

“I am a reluctant first-time runner in the local election,” declared Stephen Kerr, holding out a leaflet for a woman at the door.

“I know you; I’ve seen you in the paper,” she laughed, stepping out to examine him.

Asked if she has any particular political affiliations, the woman said she had ‘at one time’ but not anymore.

“It was because Enda was our neighbour all our lives. But that’s changed now. It’s terrible the way the town has no industry or anything or even coming up the main street, it’s not like our town at all,” she said.

Kerr pointed out that one of his key issues is uncontrolled immigration and she nodded, saying nothing, but reading him in that Mayo woman way.

“We’ve had meetings there in town about it, with 150 people showing up to discuss the numbers coming into the town and then you have councillors not showing up to the meetings at all,” Kerr said.

“Yes, I’ve heard that, about councillors not showing up,” she said. “That’s terrible.”

Kerr is one of 19 candidates contesting seven seats in the Castlebar local election.

At the next house we meet another former staunch Fine Gaeler ready to break ranks. Asked if he had previously supported any party in particular, he said:

“Oh, very much so. But not necessarily now.

“The man I campaigned for was a neighbour of mine and a school friend but he’s now retired, Enda Kenny. And that was the reason I was involved in that kind of politics. We went to school together and played football together and I was involved with him up until his retirement,” he said, taking Kerr’s leaflet inside. His wife arrived at the door to see what’s happening.

“I want to shake things up a bit,” Kerr told her.

“Oh, we could do with a shake-up. That’s no harm. I don’t know. This country,” she said, shaking her head.

A quarter mile down the road, another woman encourages Kerr, wishing him ‘the best of luck.’

“We will do what we can for you. We always like to see a few new faces,” she said with a mischievous smile.

“I promise I’ll try cause a bit of hassle anyway,” says Kerr, who has been a thorn in the council’s side for the past two years on the issue of immigration. He lobbied the council to halt IPAS and refugee numbers arriving in Mayo until adequate services and resources were in place. The motion passed.

“Oh, that’s exactly what we need in there,” the woman replied.

Further along, we meet a family with their neighbour at the back door of a cottage. The woman of the house knows Kerr.

“I said to my friends tell me about this guy and they said get on his social media and see what he’s doing. I think you definitely have a few votes in this area,” she said.

An older man is curious where Kerr is from and he explains that he is from Breaffy and his father used to work in Ulster Bank. The family moved from Cavan to Mayo when Kerr was ten. His father is from Donegal and his mother is a Louth woman. Multiple leaflets are left at this household.

Kerr launched a fundraiser to pay for the campaign and raised €10,000. His leaflets highlight health, cost of living, tourism, employment, farming, immigration and housing as key concerns.

At the next house, we meet a tradesman not long home from work. A man of few words, he says he has no particular political affiliation. He has seen Kerr’s work online.

“You’ll get a bit of backing I’d say. The people are sick of it,” he says of the influx of new arrivals.

“Because they are doing it with no plan and not much consideration for the people coming in either,” he said.

The final stop for Thursday night’s canvass is the Key West Bar, where Kerr chats with a few locals and leaves some leaflets.

Stephen Kerr outside the Key West Bar, Castlebar

He has been knocking on doors for the past four weeks and has a team of 25 people working with him. Kerr said the sentiment around Castlebar in general is ‘people are fed up.’

“I’m trying to get out five days out of seven but I’m up and down to Dublin to help Susanne too,” he said. Susanne Delaney is Kerr’s partner on the online media platform, The Irish Inquiry. She is running as an Independent in the local elections in the Blanchardstown/Mulhuddart area of Dublin.

“People at the doors are telling me, they voted for this party or that party all their life but not this time. Everyone is saying Independents. The majority of people, when I highlight the immigration issue, that’s massive for them. It’s the biggest issue for most people.”

Castlebar is named for the 13th-century castle of the de Barry family, which later became an English garrison. During the 1798 Rebellion, the town was the site of an ambush so ferocious it became known as the Races of Castlebar, driving Crown forces in a panic all the way to Tuam. The Republic of Connaught was declared under the green and yellow flag bearing the inscription ‘Erin Go Brach’ and lasted 12 days. Less than a hundred years later in the same town, the Land League was established by Michael Davitt at the Imperial Hotel.

In the passenger seat of Kerr’s car heading out towards the Newport Road, we pass the old Roseingrave family home in Newtown, where my father and his siblings grew up. His father, Joe Roseingrave served the town as a sergeant with An Garda Siochana.

Stephen Kerr first arrived on my radar in March 2021. On his lunchbreak from his job at Setanta Sports in Dublin, he went up to the second floor of St Stephen’s Green shopping centre to film a lockdown protest underway at the top of Grafton Street.

He walked up to the window where three other men were standing, filming proceedings and had just taken out his phone when a security guard shouted:

“Is he a guard? Is he with ye?”

The three men turned to look at Kerr and one replied ‘No’ before informing Kerr that he was trespassing in the shopping centre.

“They grabbed my phone, they knocked me to the ground, they roughed me up a little bit. Then they allowed me to get to my feet again,” Kerr stated in a video posted to his Irish Inquiry You Tube channel, which has more than 20,000 subscribers.

“I took my camera and I ran back to the stairs. Pretty fast actually,” Kerr explained. The security man and three men in plain clothes pursued him and he turned his camera on them again before taking off outside and disappearing into the crowd.

I was intrigued by this intrepid report, a breath of fresh air from the stranglehold of mainstream propaganda depicting anyone expressing dissent as ‘anti-lockdown’ and ‘anti-vax.’ 

After yesterday’s canvass, Kerr explained that he had overcome a crippling shyness, a deep-rooted fear of being the center of attention, in order to build his independent media channel.

“I used to blush so easily. A hundred times a day. It was confounded by a teacher in school who pointed it out in class one day and mocked me for it. And all the kids laughed,” he said.

Kerr built a loyal following as a growing audience tuned into his reports on You Tube, Facebook, Tik Tok and on Twitter, where he has 34,000 followers.

Last weekend, a video of him confronting Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman on the street in Blanchardstown, clocked up three quarters of a million views.

When Kerr organised a public meeting in Castlebar over the arrival of 700 people into hotel accommodation in his home village of Breaffy, this Substack went along to report.

Around 100 people attended that meeting on a Friday night in November ‘22, to vent their frustration over the clandestine manner in which their community was being irrevocably altered.

This remains a key issue for Kerr, who raised the topic with Enda Kenny himself in Castlebar last Sunday. Kenny was in town ahead of the disastrous Fine Gael canvass for MEP Maria Walsh, which saw Justice Minister Helen McEntee and Walsh herself scurrying through the streets in a bid to avoid at all costs, any interaction with the infamous Burke family.

The Burkes filmed the politicians while they asked repeatedly if those in power had ‘anything to say’ about the ongoing imprisonment of their son and brother, Enoch Burke. A Fine Gael press conference scheduled for Market Square was abandoned, as party members bid a hasty retreat from the Burkes’ awkward questions.

Prior to this drama, Kerr and Delaney had met Enda Kenny outside a business premises on Main Street. A video of the interaction is posted on the Irish Inquiry channel.

“Will you have a quick chat with us,” Kerr said to Kenny, who turned to shake his hand.

“What would you like to chat about?” Kenny said.

“We’re not happy about the way things are going in this country,” Susanne Delaney said.

“You know there are children up in that sports centre in Breaffy that are in windowless rooms?” she said.

The video shows Kenny take out his phone, drop it, pick it up and begin filming Delaney.

“Hold on now ‘til I turn on my camera,” Kenny said.

“You know there are children up there in windowless rooms? What happens if a fire breaks out in that centre?” Delaney presses on.

“Well hopefully a fire won’t break out there,” Kenny said.

“Can you answer me what happens if a fire breaks out there. It has no proper fire cert,” Delaney continued.

“Do you know what services we have here?” Kenny asked her.

“Can you answer the question?” Delaney said.

“Do you know what services we have here?” Kenny said.

“Can you answer the question,” Delaney repeated, before the former Fine Gael leader turned and moved off into the shop.

Kerr and Delaney take issue with how this incident is reported in the Irish Independent as Kerr is described as an ‘outspoken anti-migration activist’ and Delaney described as ‘irate.’

“I’m not anti-migration. I am anti uncontrolled immigration,” Kerr said. “There is a significant difference.”

Even more damaging for the Independent local election candidate, the Mayo News carries an erroneous report on its front page this week, alleging that Kerr was part of the Burke ensemble that sent Simon Harris scuttling off at speed through nearby Westport. Harris is not part of the political grouping that was filmed racing through Castlebar. Kerr told this Substack he never saw An Taoiseach.

He confirmed that he was not contacted by the Mayo News for comment, but the paper quotes a rival local election candidate and Fine Gael councillor Ger Deere, who described Kerr’s behaviour as ‘pure thuggery.’

Readers can watch the footage of Kerr’s interaction with Enda Kenny and judge for themselves here.

These attempts to smear Kerr’s campaign on the eve of the election, may or may not affect his vote, but it’s clear that if local and national journalists appear to be twisting the truth to serve a particular agenda, they must be worried.

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s vote, the media has simply confirmed why Kerr’s independent channel is a requirement for the proper functioning of democracy.

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Taoiseach responds to public meeting over 700 new arrivals into Breaffy