Someone used an IP address originating from Leinster House to make changes to Senator Jim Walsh’s Wikipedia article.
T.J. McIntyre, a law lecturer at University College Dublin, highlighted the edits and their origin on Twitter.
A WHOIS query on the IP address, 137.191.234.98, confirms it is registered as a public-facing IP for the Oireachtas, used by all outbound internet traffic from the Oireachtas.
McIntyre accused the person behind the IP address of attempting to remove critical content from the entry, as several of Walsh’s comments about gay people had been removed from the article:
Someone at an Irish govt IP is whitewashing the Wikipedia entry for Senator Jim Walsh:
— TJ McIntyre (@tjmcintyre) September 14, 2015
One of the removed sections had focused on comments Walsh made in March of this year, saying the money being spent on the gay marriage referendum ‘would be better spent on HIV testing for gay community.’
The revision history for the changes can be found here.