Facebook has at last removed the social media page operated by Ms Dolores Cahill, latter a former UCD professor and prominent anti-vaccination activist.
You will remember, Dolores Cahill was one of 11 candidates to contest the 2020 Irish General Election, held on Saturday February 8th, 2020, with none of their candidates being successfully elected. Dolores Cahill, claiming to represent the electorate of County of Tipperary, came second-last in the Tipperary constituency, with a miserable 521 first preference votes.
Following this election failure, her agents ceased to function failing in the removal of her election posters, for almost one year.
A spokeswoman for Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has confirmed that her Facebook page has now finally been removed by the social media giant, as part of its promise to fight harmful Covid-19 misinformation.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic began Ms Cahill has consistently remained one of the most prominent purveyors of misinformation not just in Ireland but also Internationally.
Just last month, Ms Cahill was fined £2,500 (sterling) by a London court, for defiantly holding anti-lockdown protests in breach of agreed Covid restrictions.
Ms Cahill is no longer an employee and lecturer at University College Dublin (UCD), with her details having been removed from the University’s online staff directory. UCD had faced criticism in the past for not taking action earlier against Ms Cahill over false and misleading claims.
In 2020, Ms Cahill was asked to resign as Vice Chair of the Scientific Committee of the Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI), latter a partnership between the European Commission and the drugs industry.
At the start of the pandemic, her Facebook page was followed by about 3,500 people, but by July 1st, 2021, her following had grown to include some 460,000 misguided individuals.
Thanks for this update
I feel compelled to add, that coincidentally there was an opinion piece by Fintan O’Toole in last Saturday’s Irish Times on anti-vaccine types…..he had them in 3 groups – one, egoists, two, paranoiacs and three, fascists – a crude form of classification by O’Toole’s own admission……I’d say that Dolores Cahill may be an amalgam of the first two…….suffice to say we should all be very grateful that at least she can no longer peddle her dangerous nonsense on Facebook…..let’s be thankful for small mercies!