43 Facts About Eoghan Harris

Eoghan Harris was born on 13 March 1943 and is an Irish journalist, columnist, director, and former politician.

Eoghan Harris has held posts in various and diverse political parties.

Eoghan Harris was a leading theoretician in the Marxist-Leninist Workers' Party.

For much of the Troubles, from the 1970s until the 1990s, Eoghan Harris worked in Raidio Teilifis Eireann and was influential in shaping the current affairs output of Ireland's national broadcaster.

Eoghan Harris was a columnist for the Sunday Independent until 2021.

Eoghan Harris was sacked after admitting running a fake Twitter account, which harassed journalists he believed were sympathetic to Irish nationalism and Sinn Fein.

Eoghan Harris was born in Douglas, County Cork, a village on the outskirts of Cork city, on 13 March 1943.

Eoghan Harris was educated at Presentation Brothers College, and subsequently at University College Cork, where he studied English and History.

Eoghan Harris was a leading Irish republican in Sinn Fein in the 1960s, and was an important influence in the party's move from Irish nationalism to Marxism, a political ideology which Eoghan Harris later said he abhorred.

Alongside Smullen, who had spent many years in British prisons for IRA activities, Eoghan Harris worked in the Republican Industrial Development Division, an organisation set up in 1972 by Seamus Costello to co-ordinate trade union activities, along with John Caden, Des Geraghty and others.

Eoghan Harris continued to do media work for it as it became the Workers' Party.

Eoghan Harris called for a shift to social democracy and that the party should seek a historic compromise with the social democratic wings of Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

Eoghan Harris resigned in protest and Smullen resigned subsequently, along with many of the members of the Research Section of the party.

In 2006, during an RTE Television debate Eoghan Harris stated that the leaders of the Easter Rising were "suicide bombers, I mean suicide terrorists".

Eoghan Harris pushed the organisation towards a perspective heavily critical of Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA.

Eoghan Harris recruited Charlie Bird and Marian Finucane to RTE in the 1970s.

Robinson and her campaign team blamed him for a near-fatal change in tactics: having previously been non-combative in dealing with the controversies that had engulfed the recently dismissed Tanaiste Brian Lenihan, Eoghan Harris pressured Robinson into going on the offensive on a live debate on the current affairs programme Today Tonight.

Eoghan Harris urged the Irish government, at the time led by his friend John Bruton, to end all support for Hume's peace efforts.

Eoghan Harris became an advisor in the late 1990s to Trimble, the then leader of the Ulster Unionist Party.

Eoghan Harris strongly supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and is unrepentant about its morality, writing in the Sunday Independent that "hindsight history has no moral status".

Eoghan Harris gave media training to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi in advance of the invasion of Iraq, and wrote in the Irish Independent that:.

Eoghan Harris was one of a minority of journalists to support Bertie Ahern during the "Bertiegate I" crisis, during which questions were raised over Ahern's financial propriety.

Eoghan Harris heavily supported Ahern and Fianna Fail in the 2007 general election.

Shortly before the election, Eoghan Harris appeared on The Late Late Show on RTE, in which he praised Ahern and poured scorn on those criticising him over his personal finances.

Eoghan Harris claimed that other newspapers, namely The Irish Times and The Irish Daily Mail waged an anti-Ahern campaign.

On 26 May 2007 Eoghan Harris appeared on an election special debate on Today FM's The Last Word with Matt Cooper.

Eoghan Harris said that the Mahon Tribunal should be shut down because "there is no natural justice available", and that in ten years' time "people will look back and say that the Tribunal time was scoundrel time".

Eoghan Harris then changed his mind and asked that the programme be re-recorded, but Halligan informed him that this was not possible.

Eoghan Harris worked at Raidio Teilifis Eireann, the Irish national television broadcaster, on current affairs programmes such as 7 Days and Feach.

Eoghan Harris made a documentary on mental illness, entitled Darkness Visible.

In 2004, an angry RTE viewer, Kilmacud Crokes player Hugh Gannon, confronted Eoghan Harris regarding the Sunday Independent's editorial.

Eoghan Harris reacted angrily to this, dismissed Gannon as a "Shinner" and presenter John Bowman had to step in to separate the two men.

Eoghan Harris was featured on the front cover of the August 2007 edition of Village.

Inside, Eoghan Harris was the subject of a number of critical articles written by Vincent Browne.

In 2011, Eoghan Harris voiced strong antagonistic views towards the Croke Park Agreement, arguing that the levels of pay it guarantees to public sector workers are "choking social solidarity".

Eoghan Harris continued to supply programme material to RTE through Praxis Pictures Ltd.

In 2012 RTE upheld a complaint against a Praxis documentary, An Tost Fada, written and narrated by Eoghan Harris, and produced and directed by Gregg.

Previously, in 2007, Eoghan Harris participated in an equally controversial programme, Guns and Neighbours: The Killings at Coolacrease, in which it was alleged that two Protestant farmers in County Offaly, killed by the IRA in June 1920, were killed for sectarian reasons.

Eoghan Harris has incorrectly, albeit accidentally, said he received a Silver Bear Award at the Berlin International Film Festival in his entry in 'Who's Who' in Ireland, for his documentary Darkness Visible.

Eoghan Harris insisted that he did win the award, saying that the Berlin Film Festival "mustn't keep proper records".

Eoghan Harris has written in the Sunday Independent about Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia.

Eoghan Harris is a judge on the Irish language talent show Glas Vegas, on TG4.

Eoghan Harris had written his previous column from an emergency department in a Dublin hospital.