Hobbs rose to prominence in the 2000s as a consumer advocate on RTÉ,becoming widely known for presenting programmes such as Give or Take Club,Rip-Off Republic,Show Me the Money,and 30 Things to Do with Your SSIA.[1] During this period he developed a high public profile through television,radio,print media,and book publishing,and became associated with criticism of the cost of living and government economic policy.
Hobbs is the director of Hobbs Financial Practice Ltd,a financial services firm.[2] In 2007,he co-founded Brendan Investments,a property fund focused on overseas markets. He resigned as a non-executive director in early 2015. In 2017,the fund became the subject of media scrutiny when it was reported that it had lost approximately 90 per cent of its investors' money.[3][4]
In 2015,Hobbs became a co-founder and president of the right-wing party Renua. He resigned in 2016,after the party failed to win Dáil representation.[5] During his time with the party,he stated that he sought to move it away from social conservatism towards a more liberal democratic orientation.[6][7]
From the late 2010s onward,Hobbs’s public profile shifted away from mainstream financial commentary towards political and conspiratorial themes,particularly concerning COVID-19,global governance,media influence,and international financial power. He began appearing regularly on alternative media platforms and international podcasts focused on populist and anti-establishment politics.[7]
He presents the current affairs interview series Counterpoint across platforms including YouTube.
Television career
He presented the RTÉshow Rip-Off Republic in 2005,a show preoccupied with artificially high development land prices,the perceived high personal taxes,corporate margins and cartels/monopolies in Ireland.[8] (The term 'Ripoff Republic' was first used in an article in The Irish Independent in 2003 by consumer affairs journalist Eddie Lennon). In Rip Off Republic,Hobbs advised consumers to post nappies to the Department of Enterprise Trade &Employment to object to the Groceries Order 1987 because nappies were listed as a grocery and the Act made it an offence for retailers to pass through discounts from manufacturers. Thousands of nappies were posted and the Groceries Order was repealed by the government in 2005.
Prior to this,Hobbs presented the television show Show Me the Money,where he helped various people,from farmers to hairdressers,to improve their finances and which won two IFTA TV awards. He has also presented a three-part programme,30 Things to do with your SSIA,in which he gives a humorous list of ideas for spending the money held in a Special Savings Incentive Account (SSIA).[9] Notably he advised people against investing their SSIAs,along with borrowed bank money,in Irish Investment Property (RIPS) and explained investment in property PLCs as a better choice. He outlined Minsky's bubble theory and suggested the Irish market was at the latter steps of it. In Show Me the Money he repeatedly advised since 2004 that property prices in Ireland are only going down,and strongly advised against residential investment property purchase in Ireland. In 2007 Irish property prices started to reverse. An outspoken populist critic of the vested interests in Ireland,especially the producer groups who "control the country",Hobbs has often repeated that "There's one game in town:development." He spoke out against Jumbo mortgages. In his book,LOOT,published in 2006 - two years before the 2008 financial crisis,he advised readers to reduce debt to under 50% of assets,move to AAA rated banks,exit equities,buy bonds and own some gold.
During the run up to the 2007 Irish general election,Hobbs and his colleague Matt Cooper presented a political programme called Polls Apart on Irish TV station TV3,in which they interview the main Irish political party leaders about what they intend to do after the election,if they were to be elected into government.[10]
He co-presented RTÉ's The Consumer Show from 2010 to 2012. He quit the show in 2012 after concerns of being 'stifled'.[11] He regularly appears in media debates on the nature of the Irish economic austerity policy heavily critical of the cross subsidisation of the public sector and inaction in dealing with Irish consumer insolvency. He presented My Civil War,a social history TV programme on the Irish Civil War with RTÉ's documentary unit. In November 2013 he presented an hour long pilot of 'The Give or Take Club' an experiment in social co-operation based in a rural town in a joint venture between Endemol,RTÉ,Independent Pictures and the presenter.
Other work
Writer
In 2004,he released Short Hands Long Pockets his first book as a fund raiser for The Jack &Jill Children's Foundation for whom he acts as patron since 2005.[12] His second book LOOT! was published in 2006. In March 2009,Hobbs released his third book,Debt Busters by Currach Press.
During the 2020 lockdown,he commenced work on a historical fiction novel,The First Heresy,announced by Liberties Press to be published in February 2022.[13]
Journalism
From 2007 to 2010,he acted an editorial director of monthly magazine You &Your Money owned and published by Ashville Publications. He wrote weekly columns for The Daily Star,Sunday Independent and Sunday Business Post. He is a frequent commentator and writer on social,economic and financial affairs on Irish TV,radio and newspapers. Hobbs campaigned against Government appropriation of private pension savings,encouraging savers to instruct pension trustees that they had no authority as custodians to meet Revenue Commissioners' demands,resulting in the Finance Act,which provided for a €380 fine for Trustees for every day the levy payment was delayed.[citation needed] Hobbs directed the letter campaign to urge then-President McAleese to refer the Act to the Supreme Court on the basis that it was not taxing legislation but interference with property rights. The Irish President signed the Finance Act into law. The total taken in the pension levy to 2015 is estimated at €2bn.[citation needed]
In a controversial 2012 article in The Wall Street Journal,Hobbs described the Irish Government as a captive:"So while Time magazine and others eulogize the plucky leader of the Irish people,the truth is that Enda Kenny leads a Vichy government—captive externally to creditors that still insist on loading bank debt onto the sovereign,and internally to a tribe of insiders led by union godfathers in a deal that protects the government's own excessive pay and pensions while bankers lean over its shoulders to rewrite insolvency laws. This isn't just crony capitalism. It's crony democracy".[14][15]
Hobbs miscalculated the slump in demand in developed economies,especially in Europe. Fearing that money printing operations would lead to an inflation break out,he advised mortgage holders with high debt to income to buy certainty and fix rates. He was wrong;after initially raising rates,the ECB was forced to cut them to historic lows. In 2007,as a non-executive director,he helped launch Brendan Investments Plc,a ten-year collective investment in European property for smaller investors,after obtaining Central Bank approval as the first retail investment product to comply with the EU Prospectus Directive. The intake at under €13m fell short of expectations and although entering the stable German commercial property market,the vehicle was set back by early loses when its anchor tenant,Germany's largest retail group Arcandor went into liquidation during the banking crisis and by restricted bank credit. He retired as a non-Executive Director 2015 when he was appointed a President of a new political party,Renua. Two-and-a-half years later the company was liquidated after experiencing heavy losses in the Detroit housing refurbishing market following a valuation slump in 2016 -2019 caused by a lead water crisis that erupted in Flint to the north.
In the spring of 2015,Hobbs was a co-founder of Renua,a new political party formed by breakaway members of Fine Gael,most prominently Lucinda Creighton who served as its first leader.[16] As part of the party's formal launch on 13 March 2015,Hobbs appeared alongside Creighton on a segment on The Late Late Show to explain what the party stood for.[16] On the day,there was initial confusion about whether Hobbs would stand as a Renua candidate in the forthcoming 2016 Irish general election,with Hobbs downplaying the prospect but Renua's official website listing him as a candidate.[16] Ultimate,Hobbs never did stand for the party but acted as the party's president from its launch until June 2016.
Hobbs resigned from Renua in June 2016[6][17] after the party failed to get any its candidates elected in 2016,including its leader Lucinda Creighton,despite securing 2.5% of the vote and Government funding,one of its key targets. During his time as party president,Hobbs has claimed he attempted to get the party to alter its positioning from being a socially conservative party to a Liberal Democratic one in the same vein as the UK's Liberal Democrats.[6] However,Hobbs felt his efforts were futile as the vast majority of members for the party were those who joined on the belief that Renua would be,either explicitly or subtly,an anti-abortion party.[18] Hobbs has also claimed he wanted to make a key plank of the party that they would advocate for using a Social Progress Index instead of GDP.[18]
In 2019,Hobbs fundraised and sponsored a paper from Professor Cal Muckley of University College Dublin advocating for a Social Progress Index for Ireland. It was launched in Feb 2020 and adopted by the Irish Business and Employers Confederation and Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association as key policies,later becoming the opening feature in the Programme for Government by the Fine Gael Fianna Fail and Green coalition.[18]
In March 2022,Hobbs described his political orientation as a "Radical centrist".[18]
Awards and posts held
Hobbs was appointed by the Irish government as a director of the National Consumer Agency in 2007,having served on its interim board since 2005. He was criticised in 2008 by the Irish Independent for poor attendance of NCA board meetings,which he acknowledged and blamed on poor scheduling.[19] Hobbs redesigned from the NCA in 2009,citing his discomfort with a loan given to another board member as well unhappiness with Minister for Enterprise Mary Coughlan,whom the NCA reported to.[20]
In 2013,Hobbs helped set up Own Our Oil,a citizens advocacy group focused on overhauling Ireland's oil and gas licensing regime,[21] and made a pre-Budget submission in July 2013 calling for the sale of licences to be treated like development land rezoning,and subject to Capital Gains Tax of 66% to recover economic rents to the Irish people.[22] In March 2014,Hobbs launched Own Our Oil –the Fight for Ireland's Economic Freedom, a compilation of essays from a multi-discipline team of writers covering,planning,environment,taxation,strategy,industry,geology,and history,commencing a national public briefing campaign.[citation needed] During the Irish Water controversy,Hobbs called for the redrafting of Article 10 of the Irish constitution to return the ownership of all natural resources to the Irish people from ownership by the state (which he claimed it took in the 1937 Constitution),reducing the state role to a trustee required to act in the common good but justiciable through the Courts when in breach of its duties.[citation needed] This was a move designed to alienate the ability of the State to sell off natural resources,including water to preserve itself during future crises.[citation needed]
Political and conspiratorial views
Politically,during the 2010s,Hobbs was aligned with a right-wing perspective,serving as president of Renua,a party he attempted to steer from social conservatism towards a more liberal democratic ethos.[6][7] He sought to move the party away from a focus on abortion and social conservatism,though the party failed to gain electoral success,and Hobbs stepped back from politics in 2016. In the 2020s,Hobbs has avoided direct involvement in party politics,stating he has no intention of taking on a leadership role and focuses primarily on media and commentary.[7]
In the 2020s,Hobbs has adopted a range of more right-wing and anti-establishment positions. He expresses distrust of mainstream media,which he describes as controlled by the government,and claims Ireland is subject to "globalist" influence. He has voiced opposition to the Lisbon Treaty,immigration policies,"gender ideology",hate speech laws,and aspects of the World Health Organisation’s authority over health policy.[7] During the Covid-19 pandemic,he promoted disputed ideas about lockdowns,vaccinations,and global coordination,including references to international financial and political networks such as the Rothschilds,Bilderberg Group,and Soros Foundation.[7] He has also engaged with figures associated with populist,anti-immigration,and far-right movements (such as Steve Bannon),while hosting others on his Counterpoint podcast such as Dublin anti-immigration councillor Malachy Steenson,conspiracy theorist Ben Gilroy and Cork anti-immigration campaigner Derek Blighe,while expressing support for their perspectives on media bias,free speech,and state influence. Hobbs frames these positions as exposing what he calls "the big lie" and considers them part of a coordinated global psychological and political event.[7]
Vaccination Passports controversy
On 29 June 2021,Hobbs tweeted "badges so the terrified can identify the unvaccinated among us";the tweet included a Star of David.[23] The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum replied that comparing the Holocaust to COVID-19 vaccines "that saves human lives is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline". Hobbs deleted the initial tweet and in response tweeted "Vaccine Passports instead of antigen testing is morally the wrong move",describing it as a "slippery slope".[23] He campaigned intensively using Twitter on two issues,the use of vaccine passports to segregate Irish people and vaccinating healthy children at lower risk to Covid than to the vaccines.[citation needed]
Hobbs described the Irish mainstream media as "the North Korea of Europe" in an interview with Steve Bannon and focuses on agnogenesis,manufactured ignorance from propaganda,the diminution in critical thinking and the takeover of stakeholder capitalism in Irish policymaking.[24][self-published source?]
123Jason Kennedy; Denise Calnan; Sam Griffin (13 March 2015). "Renua Ireland's eventful first day". Irish Independent. Archived from the original on 15 March 2015. Retrieved 13 March 2015.
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