The Ditch is an Irish political news website established by journalists Eoghan McNeill, Roman Shortall, Chay Bowes, and businessman Paddy Cosgrave in April 2021.

[5] However, in 2016 Cosgrave pulled Web Summit from Dublin and moved it to Lisbon, Portugal following an argument with the sitting Fine Gael government over a number of issues including grants.

Bowes had previously been involved in supplying information about Leo Varadkar providing a copy of a confidential document on GP contracts to Maitiú Ó Tuathail, president of the National Association of General Practitioners, in a story which was broken by Village Magazine.

[2] In a January 2023 podcast, Hugh Linehan and Pat Leahy of The Irish Times stated they welcomed the arrival of The Ditch into the Irish news and media scene, stating they believed that the more scrutiny applied to public figures and politicians in Ireland, they better governance it would produce, regardless of if it was a new or old media source producing that scrutiny.

[21] The publication's first piece to gain traction was a story about discrepancies and undeclared conflicts of interest at An Bord Pleanála which resulted in the resignation of chairperson Paul Hyde.

[23] In August 2022 the Ditch broke the story that government minister of state Robert Troy had failed to declare a number of property interests.

[2][1][24] On 24 August, Troy resigned as a Minister of State, insisting he had made genuine errors with his statutory declaration while saying he would not apologise for being a landlord.

[25][26][27] In January 2023, the Ditch published a story claiming that minister of state Damien English failed to declare ownership of an existing home in his planning application for a new property in 2008.