Young boy dies after getting into difficulty in water in Co Sligo
A young boy has died after getting into difficulty in the water off Lissadell Beach in Co Sligo on Saturday afternoon.
Gardaí and emergency services attended the scene of the incident.
The boy was airlifted by the Irish Coast Guard's search and rescue helicopter Rescue 118 to Sligo University Hospital, where he has since died.
An Garda Síochána said investigations are ongoing and a file will be prepared for the Coroner's Court.
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It signals the force's attempts to combat the spread of harmful misinformation before it has potentially deadly consequences. We don't have to look too far back to recall how online misinformation and hate can fuel offline violence in the space of a few hours. Rioting broke out across the UK last summer after the Southport stabbing when anti-migrant and anti-Muslim narratives helped instigate violence, while closer to home, we all remember the Dublin riots of November 2023. More recently, police in Merseyside acted similarly in the aftermath of the car ramming incident at the Liverpool FC parade . Blighe, Dwyer and Robinson have a track record of portraying their respective countries as places of lawlessness, neglected by authorities and riven by (typically migrant) crime. They opportunistically jump on any purported incident they believe – usually incorrectly – reinforces this sentiment and, in the words of Steve Bannon, accordingly 'flood the zone with shit' online. It is, at its heart, part of a wider nativist, populist strategy employed internationally by the far right to appeal to the public for political support, monetised subscriptions and broader cultural influence. While evidence was still being gathered, none of these figures could have been aware of what had transpired. Yet they – and many others – worked swiftly to fill an information vacuum that develops after such incidents while gardaí, local services and the media work to establish the facts. It is no coincidence that the three operate 'blue tick' accounts on X. The platform offers financial rewards for creating viral, sensationalist content, with few repercussions when that content later turns out to be wrong. These posts are then weaponised by far-right figures for their own ideological agendas, and sometimes used to exploit tragic cases such as this one. 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'There is a family in mourning right now. The level of misinformation on Sunday was quite shocking, and we can't just ignore that and say: 'Well, we don't have to do anything about that.'' This wasn't a question of freedom of speech, he said. 'I wouldn't overstate the impact on clamping down on blatant lies online as a sort of incursion or an undermining of freedom of speech.' The Carlow shooting has quickly become another reminder that unless we address these imbalances – between old and new media, the power of social media and the need to stop misinformation – trust in our core democratic principles and institutions will continue to erode. Ciarán O'Connor is a researcher and journalist who focuses on extremism and technology
