Labour party away-day (two days 3-4 September 2026) in Galway city. Before the summer break, the Labour party HQ was cowering beneath a rock when challenged about the Helen Ogbu backstory, and attacking journalists who tried to square her backstory, as presented by Labour, with the facts. When doorstepped in Dublin, Labour leader Ivana Bacik refused to answer questions.
We are now, all of us, clear that Helen Ogbu husband died in 2010, around 5-6 years after she arrived in Ireland and claimed asylum.
What we all want to know now is, did Ogbu claim on her asylum application (and as was later suggested by the Labour party) that her husband had already been killed. There is no evidence that she obtained permission to stay in Ireland on false pretences, but the erroneous backstory naturally gives rise to that specific question.
Now that Labour has emerged from under its rock in Galway, where Ogbu is the mayor (having failed to get elected to the Dail in the recent by-election which cost Labour a near-record €55,000), perhaps we can now get a straight answer from Ivana Bacik. And more generally, does Labour support a rules-based asylum system (because Bacik's involvement with the Oyekanmi family of Nigerians, and Palestinian visas, suggests it doesn't)?