New TD urged to resign after shock revelations

A newly elected TD is being urged to resign his seat after it emerged that he was a shareholder and former employee of a notorious military spy technology firm when he was elected in local elections this year.

In a shock victory two weeks ago, Eoin Hayes was elected in Dublin Bay South for the centre-left Social Democrats party at the expense of pro-Palestine campaigner and Sinn Féin incumbent, Chris Andrews.

It has now emerged that he is a former employee of Palantir, a firm which is closely identified with Israel’s Mossad, CIA, MI6 and other western intelligence agencies. Founded in 2004 and initially funded by the CIA, it has used artificial intelligence to target Palestinians for killing.

In January of this year, at the height of the continuing Israeli genocide, Palantir held its board meeting in Tel Aviv in ‘solidarity with Israel’. CEO Alex Karp admitted, “Our product is used on occasion to kill people. He said that ‘the power of advanced algorithmic warfare systems is now so great that it equates to having tactical nuclear weapons against an adversary with only conventional ones.”

Hayes, who served on the strategy team of Palantir until 2017, has never publicly condemned the corporation, but has denied being involved in military activity.

In a sudden denouement on Tuesday, Hayes (pictured, centre) sought to dissemble his way through questions on when he sold his shares in the firm. He claimed he sold his shares before he entered politics, but was forced to issue a subsequent statement to clarify that this was not true. In fact, he sold them a month after he was elected to Dublin city council earlier this year.

The scandal has cast a shadow over attempts to form a government in the wake of the general election at the end of last month.

“I’m rarely shocked in politics but this is absolutely horrendous”, said Richard Boyd-Barrett of People Before Profit.

Sinn Féin’s Matt Carthy described it as “incredibly serious”.

“Had this information been in the public domain two weeks ago, it is my very firm belief that Eoin Hayes would not be a TD, and that Chris Andrews would have been re-elected.

“Eoin Hayes profited personally from a company that benefited from Israeli breaches of international law.

“He misled journalists today, and was not forthcoming in terms of the period of time in which he held these shares and the time in which he divested from those shares.

“He was therefore elected on false pretences, and I believe the honourable thing for him to do is to resign his seat.”

Hayes was suspended from the Social Democrats’ parliamentary party, and will take his seat as an independent – but remains a member of the party.

In statement, he said: “I let myself and my party down today, and for that, I am sorry. This will not happen again”.

But People before Profit demanded the Social Democrats go further and expel Hayes.

“The notion that Hayes or the Social Democrats did not know what Palantir was up to until recently is simply not tenable,” they said.

“If Hayes had a shred of honour, he would resign his seat. If we lived in a proper democracy, there would be a right to re-call this TD because he lied to his electorate.”

They also questioned the Social Democrats’ oversight of their candidates.

“The Social Democrats have two faces. On one hand it recruits genuinely left-wing activists and deploys a left-wing language. On the other hand, it recruits so-called progressive entrepreneurs like Hayes and says it wants to join Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in coalition.

“The Hayes case shows it cannot look both ways at once. It needs to make up its mind. We hope that Hayes is expelled and that the party sheds its ambiguity.”

Urgent Appeal