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Mike Groll

The consultancy firm that has the ear of Ireland's top politicians and sports stars

As part of our weekly How My Business Works series, we profile the Communications Clinic.

“GO ENJOY YOURSELF. If you work hard and you’re nice to people, things will work out.”

That’s the simple advice Eoghan McDermott gave to his daughter on her first day of school this week. Day to day, it’s his job to give people tips about communicating with other people, although he doesn’t usually find himself doling out similar advice to kids.

McDermott is a director at the Communications Clinic, a training ground for a people looking to fine-tune their presentation skills, with sport stars, politicians and high-level executives all regulars on the company’s books.

As one of the firm’s founders, he has personally looked after some of its more established clients, commonly senior employees at major banks and public sector organisations.

He says sometimes these people, who have squads of advisers in their ears all the time, simply come to his firm for an honest opinion.

“These people find it hard to get anyone to give feedback, because no one will tell their boss what they’re bad at,” he says.

“There can be very subtle things that people do wrong and very obvious things. I was working with someone who was very senior in the airline business and nobody had ever told him that he had three verbal tics that would easily distract people when was speaking.

We worked together for four months and that changed for him and made a big difference.”

Eoghan McDermott Communications Clinic director Eoghan McDermott Communications Clinic Communications Clinic

What do you do and how long have you done it for?

McDermott was one of the founding members of the Communications Clinic, which has been running for eight years, but it was a work-experience gig back in 2002 during his second year at UCD that first gave him a bug for the work.

“I was supposed to be there for two weeks for the summer of second year and I never left,” he says

I came in every Thursday when I probably should have been in the library studying and I worked there on a weekly basis doing bits and bobs. It helped me to understand the principles of the communications business.”

His early career brought him into contact with veterans of the Irish communications and relations industry like Terry Prone, and Anton and Tom Savage, and it was the close working relationships he developed with them which led to McDermott taking a leap few 25-year-olds take – stepping out of a secure job to set up a business.

It was 2008 when he left his role at Carr Communications to set up the company with the trio, just as the country was about to enter its crippling economic stupor.

Despite the ensuing recession, McDermott says he never looked back and at no stage thought it was a wrong decision to go into business.

“I’m proud that we got through one of the worst recessions ever and have managed to grow our profits year-on-year. It was a bit of a shock because the Lehman Brothers collapse happened around the same time as we launched.

“That meant in terms of public relations, training and consultancy, people stopped buying, but thankfully we had some loyal clients that were still investing in their people.

So the first number of years were tough work. Then as the economy improved and our reputation improved, things have moved along well, which meant we could leave the dark days of 2008 behind.

The most recent accounts for the firm show it was in the black to the tune of €100,000 in the year to 31 March 2015, pushing accumulated profits so far to around €680,000.

TERRY PRONE BUSINESS WOMEN Communications Clinic chairman Terry Prone RollingNews.ie RollingNews.ie

What are your costs and how do you make money?

As with virtually any professional services firm, the Communications Clinic’s biggest expense is its people.

Company filings show it had an average 13 people on the books during the last accounting period, including its four directors, up from nine the previous year.

But finding employees with the skills needed to make an impression on high-ranking clients isn’t an easy task.

“You want to make sure they are willing to perhaps make sacrifices, because they might need to spend a couple of years learning this trade before they start any client-facing roles,” McDermott says.

That’s something I experienced myself having gone and done the work experience, because it did take a year or two of actually learning the business before I started to understand what I was meant to be doing.

Keeping up appearances to make a strong first impression on clients leads to another major cost for the firm: its offices on Adelaide Road in Dublin.

McDermott says the company made a very conscious decision at the onset to find a place to do business that was also impressive to the eye, but that helped it retain customers and keep revenue ticking over.

The Communications Clinic makes its money by charging for consultation and training across a number of fields, from job interviews to media appearances and public speaking.

However McDermott was tight-lipped on how much its sessions actually cost, saying only that prices varied depending on the client and the services they were after.

We wouldn’t be the cheapest on the market, we would probably be on the upper scale, but we find the clients are willing and happy to pay that because the service goes above and beyond what they expected.

Adelaide Roads The Communications Clinic's offices on Adelaide Road Google Google

What is your market?

While the company is focused on the Irish market, McDermott says its doors are open to anyone – from a company boss going on RTÉ for a grilling to a person struggling with job interviews and in need of a confidence boost.

There are a number of major organisations on the Communications Clinics’ books, but the company operates on a strict confidentiality basis – unless the client has specifically endorsed their name being made public.

Some notable clients include KPMG, whose staff come to the Communications Clinic to fine-tune presentation and pitch skills.

But it’s not just the corporate set who help pay the firm’s bills. The company also does a lot of work with international rugby players, giving them media training and public speaking tips, and has handled media relations for Rory McIlroy and The Rory Foundation for the past few years.

What is your competition?

In Ireland, there are a lot of firms out there that do similar work to the Communications Clinic. McDermott’s former haunt Carr Communications offers a lot of the same services, while there is a glut of PR firms in Dublin that also take a slice of the pie.

However McDermott insists the range of services his company provides, combined with the pedigree of other founders like Terry Prone, renowned for her work in crisis situations, helps the firm stand out.

“I don’t think there is another organisation out there with the same mix of services that we have. The careers, the PR, the consultancy – there is no one else that does it like us.”

PGA Championship Golf Golfer Rory McIlroy Associated Press Associated Press

What is your vision for the company?

Although the Communications Clinic is based in Dublin and predominantly focused on its work on these shores, it’s not necessarily tied to the Irish capital by a ball and chain.

McDermott says the company has a broad range of clients across Ireland in hubs such as Galway and Cork and is even doing work as far afield as Asia.

The attitude at the company is: “We don’t expect people to come to us, we can go to them.”

But turning the company into a global PR behemoth is not the goal. McDermott says he’s happy to see steady growth – and to continue being able to enjoy what he does.

“I get a buzz from it because you’re helping someone for a job interview and you’re helping them get that job.

“It’s especially rewarding if they have been through a tonne of interviews and you get to see the results when they actually get a job and are over the moon about it.

“Or maybe somebody you’re working with goes on Morning Ireland and does a cracker of an interview, that’s brilliant as well. That for me is the big return and what keeps it fresh.”

This article is part of our weekly series examining the nuts and bolts of businesses. If you would like to see your company featured please email news@fora.ie.

Written by Killian Woods and posted on Fora.ie

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18 Comments
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    Mute reg morrisey
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:04 AM

    Wasn’t the last one a once in a lifetime event as well?

    181
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    Mute Gearóid MacEachaidh
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:09 AM

    @reg morrisey: which one? This is the largest Hurricane to ever hit this area of Florida. That qualifies as once in a lifetime, no?

    98
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    Mute Ciaran Foster
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:05 AM

    @Gearóid MacEachaidh: unfortunately it is unlikely to be a “once in a lifetime” scale event as more of these storms will rage as the seas get warmer due to global-warming.
    We’ll likely look back on this storm as a regular event in the coming decades.

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    Mute Colette Kearns
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    Aug 31st 2023, 12:45 AM

    @Gearóid MacEachaidh: NO! It’s all BS

    7
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    Mute Playmisty4me
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:19 AM

    Hopefully everyone who could evacuate has, and those who can’t and stayed behind will be safe. I saw footage on YouTube of a man removing a child from his 4×4 to stand beside waves that were over his head, to take a selfie. He had the toddler in his arms but stumbled a few times under the strength of the wind and waves before returning to the car. It doesn’t take intelligence to become a father unfortunately.

    90
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:05 PM

    @Playmisty4me: MAGA, no doubt.

    That’s dumb, even for an American.

    12
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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:44 AM

    For all the Climate Change deniers, take a look at the Insurance Industry.

    Look at the Reinsurance Industry (the companies that Insure the Insurance Companies).

    “Prices for reinsurance rose as much as 40 percent on Jan. 1 2023 from a year earlier, according to a report by Gallagher Re, a brokerage firm that puts together reinsurance coverage deals. The price increases jolted insurers, which then made changes to where and for what they offered coverage.”

    Climate Change is real. And the Insurance companies know it. And they’re either refusing to insure people or their massively increasing their premiums.

    If you refuse to believe the science, you should check out how much extra it’s gonna cost in Insurance.

    64
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:06 AM

    @Tricia G: ALL forms of insurance have skyrocketed in the last few years, including car, event insurance, etc.
    Answer this question please Tricia; Why are mortgage providers still providing mortgages for “at risk” properties, such as seaside properties? Do they not carryout risk assessments on their investments / liabilities?

    63
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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:16 AM

    @John Doyle: You can get a mortgage but you’ll need a Flood Risk Insurance policy as well and that will cost you FAR more today now that floods have become far more common.

    This isn’t a scam. Insurance companies have gone bankrupt due to the increased number of Climate events.

    “Allstate and California’s largest insurer, State Farm, announced that they would hold off on writing new policies for homes in the state. From 2019 to 2022, payouts to homeowners there more than doubled, but premium revenue from customers increased by only a third, according to industry data reported by The Wall Street Journal.”

    From an article in July 2023 – “Farmers Insurance this week to stop renewing almost a third of the policies it has written in Florida, becoming the latest insurer to pull business from a state as the industry grapples with the rising costs of covering damage tied to floods, hurricanes, wildfires and other climate-related disasters.”
    “In May, State Farm, the country’s largest insurance company, said it would stop selling homeowners’ coverage in California. Last month, Allstate said it had stopped selling new home and commercial policies in the state, citing the worsening climate and rising building costs. Farmers itself said this month that it would limit new homeowners insurance policies in California, citing rising inflation and risks from worsening climate disasters as among the reasons.”

    You can bury your head all you want, the reality is, Climate Change is real and it’s going to have a huge impact on the world. And it WILL comet to our doors whether it’s Climate refugees, food prices, more flooding, lack of plant and animal diversity etc. etc. etc.

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 11:04 AM

    @Tricia G: Climate Refugees …hahahahaha……you mean Africans fleeing their countries because they’ve been raped or destroyed by western powers.

    39
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    Mute Tricia G
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    Aug 30th 2023, 11:22 AM

    @John Doyle: Interesting that in the list of issues, you focused on refugees……

    Hhhmmm

    30
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:01 PM

    @Tricia G: because it’s the most ridiculous part of your comment. If you are trying to infer that I am xenophobic by referring to refugees, I was literally stating how the Climate Change fanatics are allowing the elites use “Climate Migration” as a cover for their mass murder and plunder.
    You should be ashamed of yourself :)

    31
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    Mute Science
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    Aug 30th 2023, 2:27 PM

    @Tricia G: No one can deny something that isn’t true. The climate changes but man-made climate change, global warming/cooling/boiling…whatever you want to call it has not been proven to be true.

    If the insurance companies and banks believed in climate change then no property on coastlines would be insured and banks would not provide decades-long mortgages and loans if they thought those properties would be falling into the sea in a few years as predicted by your climate change doom merchants.

    As for “the science” – natural science and the scientific method prove or disprove cause and effect relationships of naturally observed phenomena via experimentation in which an independent variable is manipulated to prove it is the cause of a dependent variable. There is NO scientific experiment in which humans can be an independent variable as the cause of climate change (dependent variable).

    29
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:08 PM

    @John Doyle: Try get insurance in Florida.

    More and more insurance companies are refusing to quote, or pulling out of Florida altogether.

    The insurance business operates on facts.

    That should tell you something.

    10
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:12 PM

    @Science: And yet more and more insurance companies are pulling out of Florida altogether.

    And what makes you think that man-made global warming has not been proven?

    It has been known for over 150 years that certain gases cause a greenhouse effect. Those gases are the ones we have been pumping into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, a period which has seen global warming.

    9
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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:51 PM

    The comments on here are largely abhorrent.

    Conspiracy minded people bragging that they’d happily risk trillion in damage and vast death of mostly poor people, in exchange for… Well that’s unclear.

    Playing Russian Roulette with your neighbours, because of some nonsense you read online, is sociopathic.

    42
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 6:28 PM

    The climate cult acolytes remain strong. There are not many who deny the climate is changing, the fact the earths climate changes is not a new phenomenon.

    What the acolytes don’t like is that firstly there can be any further discussion that humans can control the climate to such a material extent as is claimed. It could be considered delusional to think humans can materially control the climate of a 4.5 billion year old planet.

    The “science is settled” – true science is never settled, it is and should always challenged.

    22
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:30 PM

    @Gregory Daniel:

    1) Certain gases have a greenhouse effect.
    2) The % of those gases in the atmosphere may have been higher in the past, and global temperatures may have been higher in the past. But mankind was not around then.
    3) Mankind has been putting those gases into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution.
    4) Global temperatures have been increasing since the industrial revolution.
    5) A human does not fare well when the temperature exceeds normal body temperature, particularly for extended periods.
    6) It is catastrophic for a human when the ambient temperature and humidity reach certain levels, levels that prevent the human body’s temperature control system to break down.
    7) Global warming also causes climate change.
    8) Examples: This is the southern hemisphere’s winter, a time when the antarctic ice should be recovering to its norms. It is not. There have been heat waves in South America. In its winter.

    To say that the world’s climate has always been changing simply ignores the fact – and it is a fact – that we would not have survived during those times.

    15
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:53 PM

    @ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: isnt it good we can still have different views. The way parts of western society is heading is that your views are considered correct think, while mine are considered wrong think and should be cancelled as mis or dis information. Always try to keep an open mind.

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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:05 PM

    @Gregory Daniel: facts are not a thing where keeping an open mind is clever or beneficial.

    “humans can’t hold their breath forever’

    “try and keep an open mind”

    Additionally, if climate activists are wrong, what happens? Money is wasted. Some person freedom is curtailed.

    If sceptics are wrong, what happens?

    Vast death – mostly poor people, and trillions lost.

    Risk/benefit.

    To look at every scientist telling you one thing, every metric pointing in one direction, etc, and think they’re all lying and/or less clever than something you’ve read on social media, isn’t clever. It isn’t open minded. It’s selfish and conspiratorial.

    Meh.

    11
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    Mute Gregory Daniel
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:19 PM

    @Chris O’Brien: its sad to see the impact this is having on peoples mental health. In the future (100-200 years) it will be taught and studied in schools how humanity went bonkers between 2000-2100

    13
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 31st 2023, 3:23 AM

    @Gregory Daniel: Which part of what I wrote is wrong,Gregory?

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    Mute Willie Marty
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:43 AM

    Governor De Santis will have to brace himself for another lifetime storm surge when he is finished with this one.

    19
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    Mute Crystal Clear
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:30 AM

    @Willie Marty: Himself or Ramaswamy will be the next US President, Id say

    10
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    Mute Willie Marty
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:32 AM

    @Crystal Clear: thats not crystal clear.

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    Mute James Carroll
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:04 PM

    @Crystal Clear: Both are cockwombles.

    8
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    Mute ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere
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    Aug 30th 2023, 8:18 PM

    @Crystal Clear: DeSantis hasn’t a hope.

    Although it’s early days, and lots of things can happen, at this stage neither does Ramaswamy. His business practices and looming legal problems, not to mention his weirdo policies will probably bury him.

    It might be fine to get MAGA support.

    But MAGA will not elect a president.

    Any Republican contender will need to be able to draw support from the population at large.

    2
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    Mute Pauline Gallagher
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:50 PM

    The complacency and ‘Ah it’ll be a bit of wind and a wet butt’ attitude is laughably dangerous

    23
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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 12:52 PM

    @Pauline Gallagher: no ones claiming that. They’re stating that natural changes or even perhaps manipulated changes in the weather are being used to take away humanities freedom

    31
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    Mute Pauline Gallagher
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:00 PM

    @John Doyle: manipulated? like a weather machine? and what freedom is being taken away? WHAT are you on about? these people are being asked to evacuate before the sea takes them 50 miles out and you’re taking about freedom what the actual f

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:10 PM

    @Alan B:

    hahahaha…genius

    14
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    Mute Chris O'Brien
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    Aug 30th 2023, 1:52 PM

    @John Doyle: so this isn’t an extreme weather event?

    Because all but a few knuckledraggers think it is.

    18
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    Mute James Carroll
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:03 PM

    @John Doyle: You’ve been on the Kool Aid far too long!

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    Mute John Doyle
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    Aug 30th 2023, 4:26 PM

    @James Carroll: wow edgy :)

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    Mute F Fitzgerald
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    Aug 30th 2023, 5:10 PM

    @Pauline Gallagher: You’re right. I know people who were working there during a previous hurricane & while they were fine putting up shutters and sheltering in place on higher ground, they were completely unprepared for the waterless week of power cuts that followed. No power meant no petrol. I’d say that anyone who was a child in Ireland during the 70s rolling power cuts knew more about getting through an awkward week than they did.

    11
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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Aug 30th 2023, 5:43 PM

    @John Doyle: My ‘Red Pill Bingo’ card is nearly filled out, don’t stop now.

    8
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    Mute HisMastersAlibi
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    Aug 30th 2023, 6:01 PM

    @Diarmuid Hunt: Hahaha,twas a wild read all the way down. Tricia G deserves a big glass of wine having to deal with that donkey John Doyle. He doesn’t seem to be well in the head whatsoever.

    16
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    Mute Diarmuid Hunt
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    Aug 30th 2023, 7:13 PM

    @HisMastersAlibi: If he’s for real and not just an extremely well-versed troll/devil’s advocate then I wonder how he believes this cabal can control the world but not stop his super-sleuthing and ensuing revelation to the “sheep”…

    9
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    Mute Bopper Holland
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    Aug 30th 2023, 9:57 PM

    My friend is there, having a blast today, parks still open with no one in them, raining heavy but very warm, going by the videos, he’s loving it

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    Mute
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    Aug 30th 2023, 10:53 PM

    @Bopper Holland: Cool story bro.

    8
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