John Waters

Waters was an unsuccessful independent candidate in the 2020 Irish general election for Dún Laoghaire constituency

Waters ran under the banner of Gemma O'Doherty's group, "Anti-Corruption Ireland", in the 2020 Irish general election, in the Dún Laoghaire constituency. As Anti-Corruption Ireland is not a registered political party, he appeared on the ballot paper as an independent. Waters received 1.48% of first preference votes and was eliminated on the first count.

In November 2018 The Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland took a defamation action against Waters for accusing her of lying about the cause of death of Savita Halappanavar.

In February 2017, Waters spoke at a panel where he blamed LGBT activists for his decision to quit journalism. He said "I stopped being a journalist because of the LGBT campaign. They tried to present themselves as beautiful gentle people, but these people aren't". Waters compared the activists that attacked him to the Black and Tans, saying "I would prefer them to the people I met last year in the campaign. I would prefer them, bring them back. Bring back the Black and Tans". "The ugliest phenomenon I have ever seen in 30 years a journalist," Waters added.

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 2015 a referendum was held on the matter of same-sex marriage. Before the referendum the Constitution was assumed to contain an implicit prohibition on same-sex marriage.

He wrote a weekly Friday column for The Irish Times. 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. 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.

He was a member of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland until he resigned in January 2014, during time that he was a litigant seeking damages from the broadcaster RTÉ.

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.

On 11 January 2014, Waters was mentioned by Irish drag queen Panti (Rory O'Neill) on RTÉ's The Saturday Night Show with Brendan O'Connor while discussing homophobia. O'Neill said that Waters, among other Irish journalists, was homophobic.

In February 2014 Waters' implicated fellow The Irish Times journalist Patsy McGarry as the author of a handful of ad hominem Tweets, written anonymously by McGarry. In the piece, Waters' alleged an institutional bias within the Irish Times against Catholic social teaching. Despite this, in March 2014, it was announced that John Waters had decided to stop contributing to The Irish Times. Reports stated that he had been unhappy at The Irish Times since the controversy.

In April 2014, Waters replied when asked if he had become depressed because of the reaction to his actions over RTÉ and Rory O'Neill: "There's no such thing. It's an invention. It's bullshit. It's a cop out."

In September 2013 he was jailed for around two hours in Wheatfield Prison over non-payment of a parking fine. The case dated back to 2011 and Waters claimed that he returned to his car one minute over a 15-minute grace period. He refused to pay the fine as a matter of principle.

In 2011 he sat for the painter Nick Miller, the subject of a naked portrait for an Arts Lives RTÉ programme, called Naked.

In 2010, RTÉ announced that Waters had sought to represent Ireland again at Eurovision, with the song "Does Heaven Need Much More?", co-written with Tommy Moran. In the Irish National Final on 5 March 2010, the song was performed by Leanne Moore, the winner of You're a Star 2008, and finished in fourth place.

Waters attended the Electric Picnic music festival in 2010 and wrote that he felt a sense of dissatisfaction with the event, concluding that there was a lack of meaning underpinning events at the festival. Sunday Tribune journalist Una Mullally replied that if Waters felt disconnected or out of place at the Electric Picnic, that it was because the country had changed, and continued "perhaps this is the first Irish generation who have purposely opted out of tormenting themselves by searching for some unattainable greater meaning and who have chosen instead just to live".

Waters also devoted much of his column space in The Irish Times to discussing the role and importance of religion and faith in society. In an interview, he has described people of faith as "funnier, sharper and smarter" than atheists. In a 2009 article titled "Another no to Lisbon might shock FF back to its senses" Waters voiced his opposition to gay marriage stating that it was "potentially destructive of the very fabric of Irish society".

"They Can't Stop the Spring", the song he co-wrote with Tommy Moran and performed by the band Dervish, was selected following a telephone vote of viewers on RTÉ's The Late Late Show to be Ireland's entry in Eurovision Song Contest 2007 in Helsinki. The song finished last in the European competition final, receiving only 5 points.

In 2007, Waters took part as one of the guest amateur chefs, in the RTE The Restaurant, programme. In 2008, he took part in a television programme which researched his family's past. Parish records revealed that his great-granduncle, also called John Waters, died of starvation during the Great Famine.

In his articles titled Impose democracy on Iraq and Bush and Blair doing right thing, Waters explained his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a position based on his belief that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the West due to its possession of weapons of mass destruction.

Waters was born in Castlerea, County Roscommon. He had a daughter in 1996 named Róisín with singer Sinéad O'Connor. He suffered from an alcohol addiction until 1989 when he gave it up completely, a decision which he says has transformed his life. He married Rita Simons in December 2014.

John Waters (born 28 May 1955) is an Irish columnist and author whose career began in 1981 with the Irish political-music magazine Hot Press. He went on to write for the Sunday Tribune and later edited In Dublin magazine 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 – that raised some €3 million for the Irish Hospice Foundation.