- Joined
- Sep 11, 2021
- Messages
- 1,249
- Reaction score
- 1,583
Declan Kelly
The owner of this is Declan Kelly, pictured and using here the simple username of Declan. A native of Galway he is a graduate of NUI Galway in engineering, and on emigrating to the Boston area in the United States he ran a popular Irish pub there called Sarsfields. Hence this website is known as Sarsfields Virtual Pub in tribute to that. He continues to work in the tourist field in Massachusetts.
Irish Webfora
While many Irish websites had or have reader forums and lively comment sections, some are very heavily censored, like the politics part of boards.ie, while others have frequently turned off comments in recent years, like thejournal.ie, but a number of dedicated Irish webfora have nonetheless emerged.
In particular in 2003 David Cochrane launched www.politics.ie as a dedicated forum for political commentary and it reached quite an audience, peaking approximately at the time of the abortion referendum in 2018 but then leading to a long decline before its demise in 2025. Many commentators on this site now, began or were active on politics.ie, including Declan Kelly, known there as Youngdan, and Brian Nugent, who was active before on such as indymedia.ie, known there as scolairebocht.
When both these writers, and a number of others, were dropped from politics.ie other webfora emerged, in particular www.politicalirish.com, with Declan becoming a moderator on that site. This was around the time of Covid and this site highlighted the many serious problems with the vaccines and other issues, systematically censored on other sites. That site was in turn also closed down, and during its many abortive closures Declan set up this site which includes many of its former writers.
There have also been some attempts to launch in other media, such as Youngdan radio, in which Declan interviewed for an internet radio station a number of important guests, (you can hear here for example an interview with the former MEP Ashley Mote
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXmsSR1fgz0
) and now with the companion youtube channel to this site, https://www.youtube.com/@SarsfieldsVirtualPub.
Writers Here
With the heavy, almost Communist style, atmosphere surrounding serious political commentary in modern Ireland, many here use anonymous names and are anonymous even to the owner of the site. Nonetheless some are known, including Val Martin, a candidate for the Irish Freedom Party in the General Election in Cavan in 2024 and well known campaigner against wind farms, he was a frequent commentator on here in its early years, and the late Marcus McQuaid of Knockatallon in Co. Monaghan (pictured above) who was a frequent and much loved poster here under the name Coal Gas and Peat and earlier on politicalirish.com as Saul. The ‘Marcus Lounge’ on this site now is in tribute to him, who unfortunately died in 2024. Also this writer, Brian Nugent, posts here under the title scolairebocht, and can be seen below interviewed on gript.ie with respect to his book on the Tuam issue in Catholic Ireland. Finally, as aforementioned, Declan Kelly himself posts under the name Declan.
Political opinions on the site
This forum prides itself on trying to permit all opinions with hopefully a lively discussion between these on the various issues. For example there are both traditional Catholics here and committed atheists, and, a few, who follow the establishment line on the Ukraine War and on the Covid rules and vaccines, although realistically most here take a more sceptical position. Ireland is also a country where, according to recent polls, over 80% of the population are hugely against the governments policies on mass immigration, and this website overwhelmingly reflects that majority.
Rules
There are not many rules for posting here, because this is entirely a voluntary venture and so it would be, and is, a very difficult thing to police any rules laid down. But hopefully commentators will write respectfully and, most of the time, concentrate on serious comments on serious issues, and not discredit themselves by harassing other users. It is hoped too that problems are solved by not engaging further with particular writers or on particular topics if at all possible, rather than asking the, again unpaid, moderators to intervene.
Irish, the first official language of Ireland, is of course welcomed but we would ask that writers in that language would make a special effort to not include libellous or foul language therein, because with its many dialects and huge vocabulary it can impose too great a burden on moderators to scrutinise easily those language entries.
