Gript Media Ltd.
Gript Media Limited is the owner and operator of Gript.ie. It was registered with the Companies Registration Office in August 2018. Gript Media Ltd has two shareholders with equal shares in the company: Niamh Uí Bhriain and Evelyn Porter.
Gript.ie was established as an online news outlet by John McGuirk, previously best known for his association with businessman and political activist Declan Ganley and for his work with the campaign to retain the constitutional ban on abortion which was removed following a referendum on the subject in 2018.
A 2019 Sunday Business Post article suggested that Gript had spent €50,000 on establishment costs and planned to spend a further €80,000 per annum on recurring costs. However, the annual accounts of the company do not report revenues, expenditures or profit and loss - as is permitted for small companies under the 2014 Companies Act. This makes it difficult to assess the impact (of any) of external financial influences on the company.
The company earns some revenues from a soft paywall (the most recent articles are freely available but older material requires a €10, €25 or €50 subscription depending on level of access) but there is no information publicly available regarding the numbers of subscribers.
An Irish Times article from 2020 described the initial establishment of Gript.ie as having been funded by “The Life Institute and donations from supporters.” (Gript.ie also shares a postal address with The Life Institute.) However, this adds little clarity to any understanding of Gript.ie’s finances since it is not entirely clear where the revenues of The Life Institute’s own finances are derived from. The Life Institute was co-founded in 2008 by Niamh Uí Bhriain (one of two shareholders in Gript Media Limited and a frequent contributor to its news output) as a pro-life campaign organisation to promote the sanctity of human life and the protection of the family. The initial capital for The Life Institute of some €410,000 was, according to co-founder Niamh Uí Bhriain raised from “an independent voluntary organisation sympathetic to the company’s aims and objectives”. However the specific identity of that voluntary organisation has not been publicly disclosed.
Business Form
Private
Legal Form
Private Limited Company
Individual Owner
General Information
Founding Year
2019
Employees
Missing Data
Contact
Tax/ ID Number
IE640146
Financial Information
Revenue (Financial Data/ Optional)
Missing Data
Operating Profit (in Mill. $)
Missing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)
Missing Data
Management
Other Influential People
studied Political Science at Trinity College Dublin from 2002 to 2006. He briefly worked in public relations before becoming Director of Communications for Libertas, a socially conservative, Eurosceptic political party which contested three Irish constituencies in the 2009 European elections. Libertas was led by the Irish businessman Declan Ganley and when the party was wound down after failing to secure a seat at the 2009 elections, McGuirk became Director of Communications at the Ganley group of companies. In 2016 he moved to another Ganley-led company, Rivada Networks, a telecoms company where he has worked as Vice President for Corporate Communications. McGuirk has been a frequent contributor to Irish public life as a media pundit where he has consistently expressed a combination of libertarian AND socially conservative views. He was a leading figure in the campaign to retain Ireland’s constitutional ban on abortion, which was removed following a referendum in 2018.
Though neither a director of the company nor a shareholder, Declan Ganley has been John McGuirk’s employer since 2007 and McGuirk has described Mr Ganley as “a close friend for over a decade”. Born in England in 1968 to Irish parents, Declan Ganley is a telecommunications entrepreneur. He co-founded Broadnet in 1996 which operated internet/telecoms services across the EU and in which Comcast took a majority shareholding in 1998. Ganley later completely divested himself of his Broadnet holdings but, as of 2023, remains active in the sector as the chairman and CEO of Rivada Networks which he established in 2004 and which specialises in wireless spectrum arbitrage. Ganley has also been a political activist on two main issues: the development of the European Union and abortion rights. His Libertas Institute lobby group (established in 2008) successfully campaigned against ratification of the LIsbon Treaty by the Irish electorate in June 2008. Later that year, he established Libertas as a political party to contest the 2009 European elections. The party fielded more than 600 candidates across the EU but only one was elected (in France). Ganley himself ran and secured a respectable 13% (70,000) of the total votes cast in his constituency but this was insufficient to secure a seat. Ganley is also avowedly against abortion and campaigned against the removal of the constitutional ban on abortion in a 2018 referendum.
Further Information
Meta Data
The Companies Act 2014 provides a reporting exemption for small companies (sub €12m annual turnover) with regard to their turnover. Many (most) companies of this size avail of this exemption. Hence the financial accounts filed by Gript Media Limited with the Companies Registration Office in Ireland contain little to no information about the company’s revenues and expenditures.
Sources
Form B1C - Annual Return General - Gript Media Limited, Companies Registration Office Ireland, Accessed on 8 November 2023
