{"id":85956,"date":"2025-09-26T02:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T02:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/85956\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T02:48:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T02:48:08","slug":"youtuber-becomes-first-person-jailed-over-posting-videos-of-asylum-seekers-online-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/85956\/","title":{"rendered":"YouTuber becomes first person jailed over posting videos of asylum seekers online \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A self-described citizen journalist and YouTuber has become the first person to be jailed, in a landmark case, over online posts which risked identifying asylum seekers in Ireland.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Paul Nolan (36) stood outside the St John\u2019s House <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/international-protection-accommodation-services-ipas\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/international-protection-accommodation-services-ipas\/\">International Protection Accommodation Services<\/a> (IPAS) centre in Tallaght, on August 22nd and 26th last year, and questioned teenage boys, a young woman and three middle-aged men who were staying at the facility.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Nolan, a father of three, goaded applicants, saying, \u201cIn Ireland, you have no right to privacy,\u201d and he posted videos of his interactions on his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/youtube\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/youtube\/\">YouTube<\/a> channel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The four clips revealed their faces. Captions included: \u201cTime to document these people ourselves\u201d and \u201cCheeky fella these economic welfare scammers\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">He questioned a man who said he was from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/gaza-strip\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/gaza-strip\/\">Gaza<\/a> about why he was here and not fighting in his own country. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The community employment scheme worker, from Mount Eagle Square, Leopardstown, Dublin 18, pleaded not guilty at Dublin District Court to engaging in threatening, insulting and abusive words or behaviour, under the Public Order Act.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">International protection applicants have the legal right to anonymity. Nolan also denied four counts, under Section 26 of the International Protection Act 2015, of publishing information likely to lead members of the public to identify a person as an applicant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge John Hughes noted that this was the first time a prosecution had been brought for this offence, which is punishable by a 12-month sentence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Nolan was given a 10-month sentence but had the final three months suspended with conditions. The videos must also be taken down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Judge Hughes described Nolan\u2019s conduct as repeated, premeditated and targeted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">He said Nolan used \u201ca tissue of lies, wrapped in a shroud of pseudo-citizen journalism\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Sentencing Nolan, he said his conduct was \u201ca disgraceful, glorious display of rudeness, hyena-like behaviour, and ignorance of the people involved\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Nolan attempted to convince the court he had, in his role as an untrained citizen journalist, learned about a demonstration outside the building and went to investigate for his YouTube channel.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He said he knew the building had previously been used by Revenue, and that undocumented, unvetted men of military age had moved in; however, he maintained that he was unaware it was an IPAS centre.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">He claimed that he learned from a comment by Taoiseach <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/micheal-martin\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/micheal-martin\/\">Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> and from RT\u00c9 News that 80 per cent of asylum seekers were economic migrants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Witnesses from Palestine and Jordan gave evidence.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The father of two boys filmed by the accused said his sons were aged 14 and 17 at the time. Video evidence showed one of them was threatened by Nolan, who said he would break his nose because the teen had elbowed him out of his way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">He told an applicant approaching the centre, \u201cI already got your face, no need to put your hand up,\u201d and mimicked their accents. He narrated his videos, once saying: \u201cThese are dangerous people we have walking the streets of Tallaght.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Nolan already had 47 prior convictions, including public order charges, 19 for drug offences and he had also been jailed previously for six months for dangerous driving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A self-described citizen journalist and YouTuber has become the first person to be jailed, in a landmark case,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85957,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,8301,18,13,14,6,19,56707,17,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,121],"class_list":{"0":"post-85956","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-dublin-district-court","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-international-protection-accommodation-services-ipas","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-youtube"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85956"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85956\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}