CLAIM: Wearing face masks can cause harmful levels of reduced oxygen.
CONCLUSION: INACCURATE. Face masks have no impact on oxygen levels. Continue reading Can face masks cause harmful levels of reduced oxygen?
CLAIM: The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement does not forbid the provision of barrier controls between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
CONCLUSION: ACCURATE WITH CONSIDERATION. The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement does not exclude governments’ border measures, but aims for ‘normal security arrangements’. The UK Withdrawal Agreement seeks to minimise physical border controls. Continue reading Does Belfast/Good Friday Agreement forbid cross-border barriers?
This explainer article answers some of the questions you may have about the StopCOVID NI Mobile App and how it works. We will update the article as, and when, new information becomes available.
[This piece is part of the COVID-19 Information Dissemination (COVID-19 ID) Project — a partnership between Community Development and Health Network (CDHN) and FactCheckNI. Its aim is to improve people’s health literacy about COVID-19 by providing accurate and up-to-date information which will increase knowledge, understanding and confidence and enable people to make good health decisions.] Continue reading StopCOVID NI Mobile App: Q&A
A widely shared tweet by Gabriel Scally on Wednesday 22 April draws attention to an Irish Times article about the difference in relative COVID-19 death rates across the island of Ireland, and claims that “the death rate for #COVID19 deaths in hospital (and for all COVID deaths) is 50% higher in Northern Ireland”.
Continue reading Are COVID-19 deaths in Northern Ireland 50% higher than Ireland?
CLAIM: More than 700,000 people born in Northern Ireland have an Irish passport.
CONCLUSION: ACCURATE. 831,779 Irish passport applications (2010-19) represents 44.7% of the Northern Ireland-born population living in the UK at the time of the 2011 Censuses. Continue reading Do more than 700,000 born in Northern Ireland have an Irish passport?
UPDATE: A previous version of this article applied a survey from Ashcroft Polls from May/June 2018. This updated version uses a more recent Ashcroft Poll from September 2019. The result is a change of conclusion from “Inaccurate” to “Accurate”.
CLAIM: There is 51% support for a united Ireland.
CONCLUSION: ACCURATE. Although the Sinn Fein manifesto didn’t declare the exclusion of “don’t knows”, this revises a 45/46/9 split to a rounded 49/51 split between staying in the UK and leaving the UK and joining the Republic of Ireland.