[13] The Press Ombudsman criticised the article for breaching the rule against anything "intended or likely to cause... hatred against an individual or group".
[14] The Press Ombudsman upheld a complaint against O'Doherty in January 2014 for a column in which he described members of the Roma community as "a parasitic, ethnic underclass".
The ombudsman said the article contained "a number of emphatic generalisations about beggars of Roma origin that, in his opinion, were clearly capable of or intended to cause grave offence".
The Ombudsman stated that "the article was factually inaccurate in relation to the two statements" and that "BDS campaigns for a widespread boycott of Israeli institutions and organisations.
Its campaign, though widespread in its targets, is limited to a boycott of Israeli State institutions as well as economic, cultural, sporting and academic organisations.
"[16][better source needed] In November 2015, when appearing on Newstalk he said that supporters of Liverpool Football Club "seem to go through so many commemorations of disasters and deaths that they should have just had a black armband just as part of their regulation kit".
[17] The presenter interrupted to point out that the club had gone through an "horrendous event", O'Doherty tried to justify his comments that as a Manchester United fan he "is not going to pass on the opportunity to have a go at them".
I don’t think the journalist in question should simply be allowed to mock so openly the families of the 96, the club, its fans and the annual commemeration of the tragedy.
[20] However, during the 1980s, he attended countess demonstrations outside the U.S embassy in protest at the Central American death squads and the bombing of Tripoli and Benghazi.
[21] In 2021, he described his support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a "mistake… As far as I, and many other observers, were concerned, this was case of stopping a mad man [Saddam Hussein] from committing further genocide… As history has shown us, however, [the Americans] just made the situation a hell of a lot worse.
[22] O'Doherty also retains a distaste for the death penalty, particularly in cases where the target is mentally ill, and has criticised both Donald Trump and Bill Clinton for their support of capital punishment.
[24] He voted in favour of the thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland permitting same-sex marriage in the 2015 referendum, describing it as "a seminal day in Irish history… we should remember that, incredibly, homosexuality was actually crime in this country until 1993".
[25] He supported of the thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland to Repeal the Eighth in the 2018 referendum on the basis that "none of us has the moral authority to tell a woman what to do with her body".
[25] He criticised David Beckham following reports in February 2021 that the former footballer had signed a £10 million deal to become brand ambassador for the tiny Middle Eastern country of Qatar.
O'Doherty said he had refused two similar offers to fly to Qatar at the start of 2020 (before the COVID-19 pandemic struck), citing the country's "appalling human rights records", particularly its persecution of gay people and treatment of women "like less than second-class citizens".
[21] In an interview on Newstalk with guest host Adrian Kennedy in January 2024, O'Doherty expressed his support of Israel's war on Gaza.
[citation needed] He expressed "genuine sympathy for the decent, honest Catholics" affected by the publication of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation's final report.
[18] O'Doherty decided to work on the project despite opposition from his employer (the Irish Independent newspaper), as well as his wife, brother, sister and others he knew.