CMAT’s speech at the Ivors in London took a direct path to serious questions. First published on The Journal of Music in Ireland, 26 May 2026.

It won’t be long before the publicity machines smooth down public discourse again, moving our critical attention away from the splintering of our communities, and the ongoing corporate seizure of our housing, music, writing and intelligence, but for now let us appreciate, once more, a young Irish artist cutting through the noise and speaking out about the world today. 

‘I would compel my fellow artists in the room – it is not the time to sit on the fence,’ CMAT saidwhen she won her Best Album award for EURO-COUNTRY at the Ivors in London last Thursday 21 May, ‘Fascism is on the rise.’ 

She then ripped into Bertie Ahern and his comments about immigrants during the Dublin by-election, and finished off with a set of expletives directed towards Nigel Farage and the Reform party. 

Can she say that? She said it anyway, at an event that also included Thom Yorke, Harry Styles and Elton John and was sponsored by Amazon Music. She began with irony: ‘I happen to be a legal immigrant in this country only because Ireland was lucky enough to get colonised 800 years ago by England.’ CMAT now lives in London, and so she is an ‘immigrant’, but by taking the long view, the category becomes ridiculous on purpose. 

‘That is actually the only difference between me and you, admin wise,’ she continued. ‘Admin wise’? Yes, if we are serious, the differences between people today are an administrative stroke of a pen, as we have learnt over one hundred years of a border. 

CMAT made her speech in a real room with real people, which is important in this age. Musicians travel all the time, playing in every back room and on every half-decent stage, and then spending the rest of the evening talking to those who turned up. They soon learn that humans are pretty much the same wherever you go. That is why she could express her outrage:

I have no time, sympathy or empathy for anybody that decides to make life more difficult for people who are just trying to live…

The fact that Bertie Ahern is a focus for CMAT’s anger is significant. She was twelve in 2008 when the economy over which Ahern presided collapsed and set us up for a €64bn bank bailout, and, as she sings in the title track for EURO-COUNTRY, she can remember fathers in her community committing suicide while bankers walked free. Our society has never faced up to this. In the video for the song, CMAT dances and flails around a shopping centre with ‘Bertie’ written on her top. Can there be a more jagged symbol of the damage inflicted on a society by a corporate-captured political class?

CMAT said in her speech that her album ‘is about the very complicated relationship I have with my country’ and that she has ‘a very specific idea of what songwriting is supposed to be for.’ She continued:

I think [songwriting] is to reflect the times through your own personal views so that people can have something to connect to and to learn from years later.

Artists may bristle at anyone telling them what their art should be for, but it is musicians who have articulated what has been happening in recent years: Kneecap at Coachella, Eoghan Ó Ceannabháin at the RTÉ Radio 1 Folk Awards, Hozier at Electric Picnic, the Irish bands at SXSW. They have learnt from the previous generation of Irish artists – Christy Moore, Sinéad O’Connor, Damien Dempsey – but their message is amplified far and wide due to social media.

One of the reasons artists end up resorting to expletives at award ceremonies, however, is because serious public discussion is being whittled away. In Ireland, for example, it is one of the notable failures of the RTÉ Radio 1 arts programme Arena that during this period it has not taken its role seriously as a forum for cultural discussion and instead exists as a PR show for whoever has something to sell.

This is a generation that has realised the power of its voice, and the talent and opportunities they have (which ironically are supported by the state’s investment in the arts – another reason why that has to be protected) put them in positions where their views can be heard. In CMAT’s song ‘The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station’, she chides herself for not articulating her views clearly enough. ‘I’m still not explaining myself very well at all / Let me try, let me try again, let me try.’ I think she’s managing just fine.