38 October-November 2025
How our gatekeepers lost their keys
— and how to hand them back
By David Langwallner
What a gatekeeper is and why
it matters
The metaphor‘Gatekeepers’ began life in
social psychology and the newsroom before
moving into political science. Kurt Lewin, the
founder of social psychology, first charted how
decisions pass through “gates” in the 1940s;
later, David Manning White, a media scholar,
applied the concept to editors. The idea then
widened to anybody who controls access to
power or information: judges, regulators,
auditors, civil servants, and sometimes
citizens. At their best gatekeepers are
custodians of conscience — charged with
firmly saying “no” when power drifts from
justice.
Historically, the Roman tribunus plebis
embodied this role — championing the people
against patrician overreach. Today, we need
their spirit more than ever. From the Oval Oce
to courtrooms to boardrooms, the absence of
ethical oversight is fuelling a free for all. And
we have only to look to the presence of the tech
brotherhood at Trump’s inauguration, Musk’s
ineradicable influence and the guest list to the
Windsor dinner recently held by King Charles
in Trump’s honour to see the overreach is
extensive.
Structural erosions of
gatekeeping
Populist delegitimisation of institutions
The first assault is usually rhetorical:
demagogues brand courts, legislatures, the
press, and independent regulators as ‘corrupt
elites’, subverters of the democracy they in fact
defend. Populism recasts the guardian as an
anti-democratic enemy of ‘the people’ and
touts the gate-breaker as a tribune. When
public argument is trained against the very
idea of neutral constraint, norms wither
quickly. Ireland’s constitutional gatekeeping
against outsider Presidential candidates which
outran Michael Flatley, Conor McGregor and
the weather girl, recently occasioned Michael
McDowell much rightward grief when his,
respectable, interpretation of it was to the
detriment of the chances of Maria Steen also.
Erosion of democratic and institutional
norms
The practical force of the rule of law rests on
democratic principles that are often anti-
majoritarian: the separation of powers, judicial
independence, legislative scrutiny, impartial
administration, mutual forbearance.
Information disorder and the collapse of
editorial filters
Hannah Arendt noted that systematic lying
does not persuade so much as unmoor —
destroying “the sense by which we take our
bearings in the real world”; platforms that prize
reach over appropriate verification finish the
job. Technological transformation, particularly
the rise of social media and algorithmic
platforms, has deeply disrupted traditional
gatekeepers of information. Political actors
now communicate directly with mass
audiences, bypassing editorial oversight and
journalistic scrutiny. Peter Vandermeersch,
writing as publisher of the Irish Independent,
wrote recently that: “Digital gatekeepers — big
tech platforms like Google, TikTok and Meta —
decide not just what news we see, but also
what gets buried”. In September 2025, the
European Commission for the first time fined
Apple and Meta €700 million under the Digital
Markets Act and opened formal charges
Gate Sleepers
POLITICS
October-November 2025 39
ideologically aligned nominees with cursory
scrutiny. When funding for broadcasting icons
NPR and PBS was yanked, Congress failed to
restore it. Even litigation support — amicus
briefs, fast-track oversight, targeted riders —
arrived in a trickle.
Inside the executive, centralisation is now
the norm. The Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau was eectively put to sleep: its director
dismissed, operations suspended,
headquarters dark. He can count himself lucky
he hasn’t been indicted, like former FBI
Director, James Comey.
Agencies such as the EPA, NRC and FERC
now move, if at all, with a nod from the White
House, their technocratic ballast replaced by
political will. The cumulative picture is not
melodrama but a cool, ecient slide into
executive primacy. Congress remains largely
somnolent, while the White House consolidates
levers of power with McCarthyite paranoia,
lawyerly eciency and a taste for speed.
The EU
Border Control and Migration
The Schengen system has been undermined
by the reintroduction of national border
controls in countries such as Austria, Hungary,
and France, bypassing EU-level co-ordination.
Simultaneously, the EU has increasingly
outsourced its migration management to third
countries including Libya, Tunisia, and Turkey,
thereby relinquishing direct control and
reducing accountability. The EU’s own border
agency, Frontex, has been weakened politically
due to credible allegations of human rights
violations.
Foreign Policy and sanctions
The requirement for unanimity among member
states means that any single country, such as
Poland, Hungary or Slovakia, can block
collective action, including sanctions against
countries like Russia or Israel. Von der Leyen’s
EU’s marginal role during the Gaza crisis —
despite international court rulings — further
revealed its limited capacity to act decisively
in matters of international law and ethics.
Moreover, in the context of NATO, EU member
states largely defer to US leadership,
diminishing the EU’s capacity for independent
geopolitical gatekeeping.
Technology and Industry
The EU has only recently begun serious
enforcement of its Digital Services and Digital
Markets Acts, imposing fines and opening
cases, yet political fragility remains. Trade
talks with the US have stalled or slowed some
probes, and Trump has threatened taris or
sanctions against European ocials who
enforce the rules.Furthermore, the EU remains
heavily reliant on external powers, particularly
the United States and China, in strategic
industries such as semiconductors, artificial
against Meta for failing to remove illegal
content under the Digital Services Act. Both
Apple and Google have bared fangs, with
Apple even urging repeal of the law. Truth is
unlikely where evidence is optional, space
limited, context scarce, truth treated as just
another opinion, and the gatekeepers diverted
by lucre. Not that mainstream media always
keep their gates clean either. Public
broadcasters are in crisis in the US, UK and
Ireland with public funding under pressure and
losses of faith in coverage of governing parties,
immigration, Gaza, housing and the
environment.
Procedural and legal evasion
Alexis de Tocqueville foresaw a “soft
despotism” — a web of small, complicated
rules that reduces citizens to wards; lawyerly
evasions turn limits into permissions and
obedience into habit.
Populist governments exploit ambiguity to
expand power “within the rules”. Emergency
decrees, executive orders, rule-by-guidance,
jurisdictional tinkering, and strategic
appointments furnish a lawyerly route to
consolidation.
Crisis as pretext
Pandemics, terror, migration and war invite
derogations. Some are warranted; many
become habit. Extraordinary powers graduate
into ordinary practice; scrutiny is reframed as
anti-national obstruction.
The Practice
The US
Executive/President
Lord Jonathan Sumption’s 2019 Reith lecture
claimed that the United States Supreme Court
has become a quasi-legislative body — its
membership prized for political reliability over
professional eminence. That evolution frames
today’s constitutional drama. Power, once
treated as a dangerous concentrate, migrated
through the mid-twentieth century toward the
presidency, ferried by wars, emergency
statutes and Hamiltonian hymns to “energy”
in the executive. As Jan-Werner Müller notes,
Congress had cultivated internal checks —
independent agencies armed with expertise
and inspectors general policing the
bureaucracy — but in the end America’s
opposition parties possess far fewer
parliamentary tools than their counterparts in
Dublin, Berlin or Westminster.
For decades the system eectively relied on
presidential self-restraint. Donald Trump
discarded that gentleman’s agreement,
preferring the demi-fascistic smash-through
MO: act first, dare the other branches to stop
him, redirect money, brandish taris, and
recast administration as personal suite.The
American people, HL Mencken’s, booboisie,
anthropoid rabble, do not know what
democracy entails and are compliant even as
the Pentagon is instructed to demand random
polygraphs.
Judiciary: Supreme Court
The Supreme Court’s 2025 decisions have
smoothed that course. In Trump v CASA, the
justices curtailed nationwide injunctions,
instructing that lower-court orders generally
bind only the parties before them. A national
red light became a chain of local speed bumps:
controversial directives, including eorts to
undermine birthright-citizenship rules, roll
forward unless defeated case by case. The
Court then leaned repeatedly on the
emergency, or “shadow”, docket to entrench
presidential control over agencies and
immigration. As of September 2025, the
Supreme Court had issued 22 emergency
orders in Trump-related cases, with four
pending. SCOTUSblog notes emergency grants
overwhelmingly yield conservative outcomes,
with nearly three-quarters favouring executive
power: including 100% of death-penalty
cases. The “shadow docket” thus functions
less as a neutral check than a tool consolidating
executive power. The pattern is drawn by the
three Trump-appointed justices and is
emblematic of the Court’s shift from gatekeeper
to enabler. The Court has permitted
deportations to third countries, refused to
reinstate two fired regulators, and allowed the
unwinding of the CHNV humanitarian-parole
programme over Justice Jackson’s dissent.
Since June 2025 it has gone further, issuing
additional emergency orders in immigration
and regulatory disputes
Legislature: Congress
Congress, by contrast, drowses. A continuing
resolution, and then the budget, widened the
Oce of Management and Budget’s freedom
to reshue agency funds with little fresh
authorisation, a quiet abdication of the power
of the purse. After a Friday-night purge
removed at least seventeen inspectors-
general, often without the requisite statutory
notice, no meaningful counter-punch followed:
no subpoenas with teeth, no emergency
hearings, no remedial statute.
Lawmakers largely watched as executive
orders asserted White House direction over
nominally independent regulators such as the
SEC, FTC and FCC. The Senate confirmed
Justice was not blind —
it was chloroformed
40 October-November 2025
intelligence, and green technologies —
restricting its ability to set global industrial
standards.
In July it was reported in the Financial Times
that: “The European Commission has stalled
one of its investigations into Elon Musk’s X for
breaking the bloc’s digital transparency rules,
while it seeks to conclude trade talks with the
US”. In parallel, the EU has moved to exclude
US tech giants such as Google, Apple, Amazon
and Meta from its upcoming Financial Data
Access (FiDA) system — a sign that gatekeeping
contests are spreading from media into
financial data.
The EU was expected “to finalise” its probe
into the social media platform before the
European Union’s (EU) summer recess but
missed the deadline. There’s a sense, at least in
Trumpland, that the EU likes rules for their own
sake — as well as weapons. As of September,
the US was considering sanctions on EU or
member-state ocials who enforce the Digital
Services Act (DSA) and has ordered diplomats
to push back on the law; Trump has also
threatened taris tied to foreign “digital rules”.
Economic Sovereignty
The European Central Bank lacks the powers
of a fiscal gatekeeper and cannot redistribute
wealth or respond to crises with the flexibility
of institutions like the US Federal Reserve. The
EU’s energy policy also remains fragmented,
as national interests have repeatedly
overridden attempts at a unified response,
especially in the aftermath of the war in
Ukraine. Additionally, persistent tax avoidance
by multinational corporations, facilitated by
member states such as Ireland, continues to
undermine EU-wide taxation objectives.
Still strong as rulemaker but lacks cohesive
impetus
While the EU remains influential as a regulatory
rulemaker, particularly in areas such as
environmental policy, data privacy, and
product safety, its capacity to enforce and
uphold these standards uniformly across
member states is increasingly constrained by
a lack of political cohesion and enforcement
mechanisms.
Ireland
SIPO — Standards in Public Office
Commission
SIPO is tasked with guarding political ethics,
lobbying, donations and disclosures. Its
statutory design undermines that task. It
cannot readily open full investigations ex
ocio; is constrained by narrow triggers; and
lacks swift, proportionate sanctioning powers.
It simply does not bring enough cases to a
hearing and a decision: SIPO’s 2024 report
reveals it processed 127 complaints under the
Ethics Acts and initiated three preliminary
inquiries. It initiated one investigation hearing
in 2024, with two investigations ongoing at
year’s end.
Recent high-profile episodes, most notably
SIPO’s handling of then-Taoiseach Leo
Varadkar’s leak of a confidential document,
exposed motivational flaws: it first claimed it
could not consider the complaint because he
was Taoiseach; after a court setback with this
approach, it concluded the document’s
confidentiality had not been proved though the
document was marked confidential. SIPO’s
2024 investigation into inaccurate declaration
of interest filings by former junior enterprise
minister Robert Troy found the Fianna Fáil TD
“acted in good faith” and would not have made
errors if he had sought help with the
documents. Although it found that Troy was in
breach of the Standards in Public Oce Act
2001 and that his “pattern of omissions or
errors” were a “matter of significant public
importance”, the media dwelt on the finding of
good faith and he was rehabilitated [see also
the piece on SIPO in this edition].
What SIPO needs, and it has said so itself, is
the power to initiate investigations without
complaint; administrative penalties that bite;
and mandatory timelines. As long ago as 2014
the Council of Europe’s Group of States against
Corruption (GRECO) recommended that
“Ireland should replace the existing ethics
framework with a uniform and consolidated
values-based normative framework”.
As to the regulation of lobbying, SIPO’s code
of conduct requires cooling-o periods for
ex-public servants of only twelve months and
allows too many waivers. Consultancy shells
and “strategic communications” blur the
continuity of influence. A register without a
facility for surprise audits, noting only what
lobbyists choose to declare, represents a
triumph of ethical aspiration over reality.
Office of the Police Ombudsman (Fiosrú)
(replaced GSOC — Garda Síochána
Ombudsman Commission in April 2025)
GSOC delivered little disciplinary action. In
2023, GSOC opened 1,577 complaints
containing 3,358 allegations; sent forty files to
the DPP, which directed eleven prosecutions;
and there were only three convictions.
Investigations depend on Garda cooperation.
The appearance of closeness has compounded
distrust — most notoriously when an
investigator resigned after socialising with a
high-profile suspect. Independence must be
asserted: ring-fenced staffing, external
recruitment at senior grades, statutory
deadlines, and public reporting with teeth are
minimum conditions.
Equality Authority/IHREC
The Equality Authority (established under the
Employment Equality Act 1998) developed a
reputation for assertive enforcement under
Niall Crowley. In 2008, a 43 per cent budget cut
— far deeper than peer bodies — prompted his
resignation and a board walkout over
independence. The 2014 merger with the Irish
Human Rights Commission to form IHREC was
presented as rationalisation; critics read
dilution. Post-merger, high-impact equality
litigation declined and the institution’s
visibility in confronting structural inequality
dimmed. International monitors have
questioned the new body’s independence and
capacity. Whatever the formal guarantees, the
system shifted from an assertive, enforcement-
led model toward a more bureaucratic, less
confrontational stance — with enduring
implications for the ability of the State to tackle
discrimination.
Tribunals of Inquiry
Tribunals are Ireland’s theatre of conscience:
public, prolonged, and cathartic. Yet from
Mahon to Moriarty to Smithwick Fennelly, the
line between revelation and remedy has
snapped. Damning findings rarely translate
into prosecutions; years-long timelines dull
public urgency; costs mount as consequences
thin. The tribunal becomes a safety valve —
airing the State’s “dirty laundry” without ever
washing it. Performance supplants
enforcement; the status quo survives.
Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA)
The Companies (Corporate Governance,
Enforcement and Regulatory Provisions) Act
2024 expanded the CEA’s supervision and
enforcement powers but, in 2025, a spate of
Garda secondments was rescinded or allowed
Gatekeepers
are recast as
impediments
rather than
safeguards
October-November 2025 41
to lapse; four detectives were directed back to
An Garda Síochána in May, and the authority
has been operating with a depleted Garda
complement amid allegations of a “toxic”
culture. The CEA also lost its director of criminal
enforcement, Rebecca Coen, after roughly
eighteen months. The chief executive’s annual
report commentary describes a “power
struggle” over who controls seconded ocers
— an argument that delayed refilling Garda
vacancies. A cultural audit has been
commissioned.
The Ombudsman
The citizen’s champion can investigate and
recommend but not compel. Survivors of
institutional wrong experience process without
remedy: respectful reports, limited traction. In
practice, the Ombudsman risks conferring
moral cover on inaction.
Courts and constitutional evasions
Constitutional promise meets procedural
austerity. Directive principles (Article 45) are
non-justiciable; rights guarantees (Article
40.3) elicit deference in practice. In-camera
rules protect privacy but can shade into
opacity; costs chills deter public-interest
litigants; ever-increasing “streamlining” in
planning compresses standing and timelines;
EU-law supremacy is armed yet eectively
postponed when awkward. In environmental
and whistleblowing matters, institutional
non-responsiveness curdles into a polite
authoritarianism.
Justice is rarely available to the small
people. The criminal-justice ecosystem
illustrates the diculty. In the Phelan murder
trial, concerns arose when prejudicial material
entered the record and a key witness
subsequently disappeared abroad. The jury’s
verdict is, of course, unimpeachable. Yet for
the family of the working-class trespasser/
poacher who lost his life in tragic
circumstances at the hands of the barrister,
justice has seemed not so much blind as
chloroformed.
Freedom of information and administrative
secrecy
Franz Kafka’s parable of the man kept waiting
before a gate “meant only for you” is our FOI in
miniature: the architecture of entry, the
practice of refusal.
FOI hinges on access but is constricted by
fees, exemptions and a broadening concept of
“commercial sensitivity”. Departments learn
that “records do not exist” is a durable shield.
Without proactive publication duties,
independent appeals that bite, and sanctions
for bad-faith refusals, transparency darkens.
Worse even than FoI, in June 2024 the Minister
for Justice obtained the broadest order from
the High Court requiring communications
providers to retain user metadata for 12
months, for (secret) “security purposes”.
Outcry was there none.
Summary
It is useful to place Ireland’s drift beside
Europe’s and America’s. The EU writes
ambitious rules and, as seen in the September
2025 fines against Apple and Meta, is at last
beginning to enforce them — but it still
struggles to do so uniformly, and trade politics
often blunt the edge. The EU writes ambitious
rules but struggles to enforce them uniformly.
Border re-controls, outsourced migration,
unanimity vetoes on taxtion changes and on
sanctions on Israel and Russia, and the halting
roll-out of the Digital Services and Markets
Acts all reveal the gap between rule-making
and effective enforcement. In strategic
industries the EU remains dependent on
external supply chains; the ECB lacks fiscal
tools to act as a gatekeeper for economic
shocks. Rule-making power without cohesive
enforcement is a fair-weather dispensation.
The United States shows the opposite
ailment: an abundance of coercive instruments
in the executive, consolidated by procedure.
Emergency orders cascade; oversight posts
are purged; independent agencies pre-cleared
through the Oce of Management and Budget
and its subsidiary, the Oce of Information
and Regulatory Aairs; Congress declines to
exercise its own remedies; and the Supreme
Court’s emergency orders repeatedly favour
the executive, narrowing the tools lower courts
once used to halt unlawful policy nationwide.
The Overton window is open to a gale.
Literature’s warning
— and the stakes
“The law hath not been dead, though it hath
slept”, notes Angelo in Shakespeare’s Measure
for Measure. But apart from retrospectively we
can never be sure. Kraus warned that
corruption endangers the morals of a country
more than vice ever could. We have long since
hung the “jingling padlock” in Pope’s Dunciad
on the civic mind so when Dorothy and friends
reach the Emerald City, the Guardian of the
Gates, acting on the Wizard’s instructions,
makes them wear locked green spectacles “for
their own good” before granting entry;
Sciascia’s Equal Danger ends on the injunction
that the people must never know the truth —
and nobody can better guarantee this than a
sleeping gatekeeper. The erasure of nuance is
tyranny’s precondition. We need gatekeepers
who speak before the iceberg hits, not after.
Jolting the gatekeeper
from slumber
To restore the gatekeeper is to restore
democracy to the people: teeth to legality;
consequence to scrutiny; verification to
information; and substance to form. Let the
gatekeepers awake and take back the
republic.

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