John Augustine Waters (born 28 May 1955) is an Irish columnist and author. He started his career with music and politics magazine, Hot Press, and also wrote for the Sunday Tribune newspaper. He later edited the social magazine In Dublin, and the investigative and current affairs magazine Magill. He became a regular columnist at the Irish Times and then the Irish Independent, while authoring some works on non-fiction, and developed The Whoseday Book, which raised 3 million euros for charity. He has also been a member of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
Waters was an unsuccessful independent candidate in the 2020 Irish general election for Dún Laoghaire constituency.
Personal life
Waters was born on in Castlerea, County Roscommon to Thomas (1904–1989) and Mary Ita Waters (née McGrath; 1920–2012). From a relationship with singer Sinéad O'Connor, he has a daughter, Brigidine Roisin Waters, who was born on 10 March 1996 in London. Following her birth, a long legal custody battle ensued resulting in Waters having custody of his daughter and residing with him in Dalkey.
He suffered from an alcohol addiction until 1989 when he gave it up completely, a decision that he credits with transforming his life. He married Rita Simons in December 2014.
Career
Early career
Waters's career began in 1981 with the Irish political and music magazine Hot Press. He wrote for the Sunday Tribune and later edited In Dublin magazine from 1985 to 1987 and Magill.
Waters has written several books and, in 1998, he devised The Whoseday Book — which contains quotes, writings and pictures of 365 Irish writers and musicians – raising €3 million for the Irish Hospice Foundation.
Irish Times and Irish Independent
Waters wrote a weekly column for The Irish Times from 1990 to 2014. He was briefly fired during a dispute with the then editor, Geraldine Kennedy, but was shortly thereafter reinstated.
In March 2014, Waters left The Irish Times, and shortly after started writing columns for the Sunday Independent and Irish Independent. In 2018 he released a new book called Give Us Back the Bad Roads. On 13 July 2014 the Sunday Independent published what it described as Waters' first column for the paper. He has since written regular columns for that paper and its sister the Irish Independent.
Waters is a fortnightly contributor to the American journal First Things and is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Center for Ethics and Culture, University of Notre Dame.
Politics and advocacy
Waters was an active participant in the Catholic cultural movement Communion and Liberation. He has given at least one talk to the Iona Institute.
He was a member of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland until he resigned in January 2014, during which time he was a litigant seeking damages from the broadcaster RTÉ.
In 2015, he became involved with First Families First in calling for a 'No' vote in the referendum for the Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015.
In February 2018 he appeared with Nigel Farage at an Irexit conference organised by Hermann Kelly. The conference described itself as open "only to supporters of an Irish exit from the European Union". There were several members of the far-right National Party - headed by Justin Barrett - at the conference. He denied that Ireland was a republic, state or democracy. Waters was quoted as saying "We have to remove the media because they don’t permit us to have the conversation" to which the crowd responded enthusiastically. They also applauded his claim that immigrants "have no affinity or allegiance to the countries they end up in" and that "[t]his is our fault because we don’t demand it". He claimed that "Europeans no longer have a place to call home" and that European Christianity was being eroded by "metastatic cancer".
In 2019 he appeared in a number of podcasts with Gemma O'Doherty and Justin Barrett.
Balbriggan meeting
On 28 January 2020, Waters and O'Doherty addressed an Anti-Corruption Ireland meeting in Balbriggan. During the meeting he said "many of the ethnicities that are coming here” had “fertility rates that are two or three times the Irish rate" and claimed the great replacement conspiracy theory of Renaud Camus would happen in Ireland. He criticised the Fianna Fáil slogan "An Ireland for all", saying in an outraged tone "Who were Fianna Fáil referring to? ISIS? There are two words missing. Except Paddy". During his speech he openly speculated about being murdered in a nursing home by an immigrant care worker.