The Ditch has previously reported<\/a> on CitizenGo’s efforts to intervene in last year’s presidential election in favour of Maria Steen under Maria Mahoney’s predecessor Louise Roseingrave.<\/p>\nBefore last year CitizenGo had a minimal presence in Ireland through Irish-American conservative activist Scott Schittl, a longtime political and business associate of Niamh U\u00ed Bhriain of Gript. Its activities in other countries have been far more extensive.<\/p>\n
Though portraying itself as a platform for grassroots activism it is a major funder of political campaigns, and has close ties with several European political parties, including Vox in Spain, Fidesz in Hungary and Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland in Germany.<\/p>\n
Mahoney recently organised a \u201cName and Shame Roadshow\u201d with anti-abortion activists, holding small protests in the constituencies of TDs who voted for an unsuccessful private member’s bill that would have fully decriminalised abortion in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Her husband Cormac \u00d3 Corcor\u00e1in appears in a photo of the D\u00fan Laoghaire protest posted on X by CitizenGo Ireland, alongside two people holding posters of Fine Gael TDs Barry Ward and Jennifer Carroll MacNeill branding them \u201cabortion zealots\u201d.<\/p>\n
Another protest in Cavan, targeting Sinn F\u00e9in TDs Cathy Bennett and Matt Carthy, incorporated a statue of for Cavan GAA legend John Joe O’Reilly, with a tweet by CitizenGo Ireland saying, \u201cCommandant John Joe O\u2019Reilly helped us hold the banner listing all the TDs who shamefully voted to decriminalise abortion up to birth.\u201d<\/p>\n
CitizenGo’s signature method of applying political pressure are petitions to send automated emails to their targets.<\/p>\n
Mahoney, whose name is given as M\u00e1ire N\u00ed Mhath\u00fana on CitizenGo’s website, has written and promoted several petitions since starting her position, including one targeting a parish priest by name for allowing a trans rights event to be held in a parish hall.<\/p>\n
Her first CitizenGo petition back in December urged Miche\u00e1l Martin to support Aont\u00fa’s private member’s bill to reform the presidential nomination process.<\/p>\n
Mahoney previously taught at Newman College Ireland, a short-lived Catholic college that operated in Derry from 2014 to 2018. Originally from the US, she came to Ireland to study at NUI Galway, where she was auditor of its anti-abortion society.<\/p>\n
\u00d3 Corcor\u00e1in, a native of Galway City, ran as Aont\u00fa’s candidate in Galway West in the 2020 general election, where he received 1,008 first preferences and was eliminated on the third count.<\/p>\n
CitizenGo\u2019s work has aligned with Aont\u00fa.<\/p>\n
On 29 December last year CitizenGo had a stall outside the GPO collecting signatures for the petition with a banner that read \u201cPass Aont\u00fa’s Bill\u201d.<\/p>\n
In February Aont\u00fa\u2019s Donegal representative Mary T Sweeney recorded a video encouraging people to sign the petition which was shared on the CitizenGo Ireland account on X.<\/p>\n
CitizenGo also had a stall at Aont\u00fa’s ard fheis in March of this year, where Mahoney collected signatures for a petition to repeal the Gender Recognition Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n
International dark money\u00a0<\/p>\n
A 2021 investigation by the Mozilla Foundation found that CitizenGo paid professional disinformation peddlers in Kenya to spread false claims about abortion and surrogacy, including that surrogate births were more likely to experience medical complications.<\/p>\n
It has also campaigned in favour of a bill that would introduce the death penalty for \u201caggravated homosexuality\u201d in Kenya, where homosexuality is already illegal, and make LGBT Kenyans second-class citizens in their own country.<\/p>\n
CitizenGo has always maintained that it is funded entirely by small donors and does not accept financial support from public institutions or private entities.<\/p>\n
However according to the 2021 Tip of the Iceberg report on the role of international dark money in funding opposition to gender equality, LGBT rights and reproductive freedom in Europe, CitizenGo’s founder Ignacio Arsuga solicited seed capital to establish it from board members in exchange for their seats.<\/p>\n
It recently started a new campaign in conjunction with the Life Institute called Three Days to Save a Life against the scrapping of the mandatory wait period for abortion. The organisation is also holding what it calls \u201ccoalition meetings\u201d about repealing the Gender Recognition Act.<\/p>\n
Aont\u00fa party leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn said there was no link between his party and the organisation. <\/p>\n
“Aont\u00fa has no more of a relationship with CitizenGo than the The Ditch has.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAont\u00fa has all kinds of stands at the ard fheis including charities, mental health groups, Irish language activists and honeybee protection societies,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
CitizenGo was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dean Buckley The campaigns manager in Ireland for a foreign political organisation carrying out a \u201cname and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":604407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-604406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=604406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/604406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/604407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=604406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=604406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=604406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}