From Noel to Ken O'Flynn: How a family name shapes Cork's political landscape
Noel O'Flynn with his son Cork TD Ken O'Flynn at Nemo Rangers during the General Election count in 2024. Picture: Larry Cummins
Noel O’Flynn was agitated. He pointed a finger at the reporter and said in no uncertain terms that he had no comment to make. Then he walked away in a sour air. Quite obviously, he felt aggrieved.
The scene was Cork City Hall at the general election count in 2002. O’Flynn, a Fianna Fáil TD, had hit the headlines in the run-up to the election, lashing out against asylum seekers, who had just begun to arrive in an Ireland that was newly wealthy.
“We’re against the spongers, the freeloaders, the people screwing the system,” he had said a few months earlier. “Too many are coming to Ireland and too many to Cork in my view… the majority of them are here for economic reasons and they are thumbing their noses and demanding everything under the guise of the Geneva Convention while the taxpayer is paying for it all.”
The had taken a particularly robust stand against his comments. As a reporter for that newspaper, I was not flavour of the count centre with O’Flynn. He was the first national politician to lash out at asylum seekers, characterising them as spongers and freeloaders.
Read More
More than 20 years later, Noel’s son Ken, who, in an electoral sense, inherited the seat, had his own beef with those arriving here fleeing war. In 2025, he disseminated through social media allegations the Government had spent €1.6m on eight cars to transport newly arrived Ukrainians.
In reality, the vehicles cost a fraction of that, and were used as temporary transport for Ukrainians placed in remote locations soon after arrival.
O’Flynn made comparisons between that scheme and funding for transport for a cancer charity. “It just shows the injustice and unfairness that is happening in Irish society by our Government,” he said. “You cannot provide a service to one group of people and not provide the same service to our own."
O’Flynn arrived at his allegation by taking an answer to a parliamentary question and extrapolating that into a scenario that made the whole thing look ridiculous. The transport scheme as a whole cost €1.6m. A total of eight vehicles were mentioned so he used that to suggest each vehicle cost €200,000. Then he highlighted a local funding issue, as if those fleeing war were being treated in luxury while natives were shortchanged.
Switch on social media and amplify exponentially the bare bones of an inaccurate thesis and, intentionally or not, you have the makings of plenty of resentment and anger. One report at the time stated O’Flynn’s video on the matter was viewed more than 160,000 times.
Immigration is a favoured topic for the TD. In a Dáil debate last year he set out his views.
“Irish people travelled abroad to America, Canada and Australia not with the hand out, but looking for the hand up,” he said. “They worked hard and diligently and never asked for anything. There is a big difference between that and a lot of the people coming into this country and what is being provided to them.”
Contrasting the hard-working Irish emigrant with the alleged indolent emigrants from the developing world is a familiar trope in some circles. In reality all emigrants tend to work harder than native people, as most Irish employers would confirm.
Ken O’Fynn may be a chip off the old block in some ways, but in other he definitely is not. Noel was an old-style Fianna Fáil constituency TD. Ken is highly polished, articulate, comports himself with some sartorial elegance and is gay. His personal life includes marriage to a Spanish man, which he often references as evidence he is not anti-immigrant and couldn’t be homophobic.
Of late, he has been showing up at all sorts of fringe gatherings on the nascent populist right. He was a prominent guest at the Eddie Hobbs IRL Forum in Ashbourne in January, discussing non-governmental organisations (NGOs).
Among the populist right in this country, NGOs are the equivalent of Donald Trump’ deep state. Apart from immigration, and for some reason gender dysphoria, NGOs are considered the root of all evil.
In the panel discussion, O’Flynn brought up the subject of charities that promote suicide prevention.
“At one stage, there were more suicide charities in this country than there were suicides,” he said. A ripple of laughter came from the audience. O’Flynn responded: “It might sound funny but it’s not”.
He told the gathering if he wanted to make a lot of money in the morning, he would set up an NGO. In this vein, he mentioned the LGBT community, of which, he said, he didn’t consider himself a member.
“There are groups claiming to be LGBTQABCDEFG organisations coming into the Oireachtas and they all have one ask — we need more resources."
The resourcing of State-assisted organisations is a constant theme in governance, as is their political influence. LGBT organisations have a primary function of tackling discrimination, which can at times include violence.
Ken O’Flynn came to politics somewhat by default. His brother Gary occupied the Cork City Council seat vacated by their father when the dual mandate was abolished. In 2008, Gary resigned once he became embroiled in a fraud investigation. Ken took the seat and was re-elected at every election up until ascending to a Dáil seat in 2024.
Gary was sentenced to five years in prison for soliciting somebody to kill people investigating the fraud. His brother has spoken of the understandable trauma for a family in that situation.
Over the years, he built up a property business with interests in this country and Spain. In the Dáil, he often references his business background and how so few in Government have that experience, a contention that may well have some substance.
In 2017, his declaration of interests as a councillor included property in Cork, Limerick, Dublin and Spain as well as 42 apartments in London. By 2025, in his declaration as a TD, he was part-owner in five properties, mostly industrial units and all in the Cork area.
In 2020, he left Fianna Fáil after failing to be selected to run in the general election. His relationship with the party leader and fellow Corkman Micheál Martin was not easy, but it is unclear whether that had anything to do with the failure to select him. He ran as an independent in Cork North Central and lost out narrowly for the final seat to Mick Barry of People Before Profit.
The following year, after the Taliban retook Afghanistan, he issued on social media a photograph of an airplane with Afghan refugees hanging on. “Flight coming in from Afghanistan,” he posted, calling for “checks and balances” among those fleeing the Taliban.
In reality, the photo was from three years earlier and concerned refugees being deported from Turkey to Afghanistan. Posts such as these could conveniently be read as portraying plane loads of refugees heading for Ireland.
O’Flynn refused to apologise for the false portrayal. He called anybody who criticised his post as “snowflakes”.
An interview about Traveller accommodation conducted by Neil Prendiville with O’Flynn on Red FM some months later was the subject of investigations by the broadcasting authority and the ethics watchdog, Standards in Public Office (Sipo).
The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland found the interviewer failed to challenge “serious allegations” levelled against Travellers, which were “inappropriate and unjustifiable”.
In 2024, O’Flynn joined Independent Ireland and became one of four TDs elected under that banner. This was, in effect, a recapturing of the family seat Noel O’Flynn had lost in 2011. On his election, his father was co-opted onto the city council seat for Independent Ireland.
Last year, O’Flynn told Sipo he was not speaking in his role as councillor when he made the comments on Red FM about Travellers, and had a legitimate entitlement to free speech. It is unclear how the councillor could not have been speaking as a councillor on a public policy issue. Sipo ruled in August last it would not pursue a full investigation into the matter, citing “unclear evidence” and “belated remorse”.
A few weeks ago, the Cork North Central TD attended an event advertised as the women’s coalition on immigration near Leinster House. This gathering attempted to link a rise in reported sexual violence with immigration.
The group did not provide any evidence of this alleged phenomenon, but quoted some broad statistics from other countries without any context. Both An Garda Síochána and groups working with women who have experienced sexual violence say there is no evidence of such a link.
Despite the premise of the meeting being about women’s safety, there was no mention of the home, where statistically most violence against women is perpetrated.
In a statement to the , O’Flynn said about this issue that people were entitled to raise concerns. He did not address a question as to whether this might be considered dog whistling on immigration, as there is no evidence of that which is allegedly concerning.
“On crime statistics, data should inform policy and must be presented responsibly and with context,” according to his statement. “Migration has repeatedly been linked to sex crimes in other EU countries.”
Again, there is dispute in these countries about the links being claimed and questions over the reasons for attempting to do so.
The busy Mr O’Flynn was also recently at another gathering, a conference in Dublin city centre of a group which wants to repeal the 2015 Gender Recognition Act. His speech on this occasion was fairly straightforward, laying out the legislative ground passed since the act came into being.
At most of these gatherings, O’Flynn has been the only TD present. He is currently the chair of Independent Ireland, while Cork South West TD Michael Collins is the leader. However, O’Flynn is acquiring a profile among the small but eager group which gets very exercised about immigration, NGOs and gender dysphoria.
As of now, there appears very little electoral appetite for this kind of politics, which had made inroads in other Western countries.
The contacted Ken O’Flynn to request a few minutes of his time over the phone in connection with this piece. He responded he was in a meeting, even though it was made clear there was at least a 24-hour window to talk. Instead, he asked for questions to be submitted.
Eleven questions were submitted covering the issues broached in this piece, but instead of answering directly, he sent a brief statement, most if it quoted here, about the women’s coalition event.
The only other question he addressed was one concerning political identity and whether his politics could be described as populist right (my term).
“As for political labels, I focus on accountability, fairness, and practical policy,” he wrote.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
