“I have now resigned from the Irish Times with many regrets, but nevertheless certain of the importance of protesting at the present drift of the newspaper towards an ideological orthodoxy that threatens its role as an esteemed journal of record and a bulwark of Irish democracy.

Over the years I’ve been involved in many intense debates in Irish life. That’s part of my job as a commentator. But, apart from the particular unpleasantness of the “homophobia” frenzy, there was also the fact that, this time, uniquely in my career, I was being targeted for things other people were saying I had said rather than anything actually said or written by me. And the nature of the frenzy – in social media, on blogging websites like broadsheet.ie, politics.ie and thejournal.ie, and most shockingly of all throughout the mainstream media – was such as to conceal this ungainsayable fact from the general public.

Anyone with the slightest concern for the health of Irish democracy must regard the deluge of hatred more or less stoked by the ‘national broadcaster’ and the Irish Times, and agitated in the lawless world of social media into a tsunami of bullying, with the utmost dismay.

By far the most worrying aspect, however, is that, unless urgent action is taken by those with the power to take it, there may soon be no audible voice left to raise itself against the corrupted clamour of the unrecognised, unaccountable fifth column now directing every twitch and nuance of our public life.

What is at issue is not, as some propose, the validity of any particular argument, but the capacity of the collective conversation much longer to accommodate.”

John Waters writing in Village magazine.