'I'm a young woman with children and the thought of the elite microchipping us all and controlling us is quite scary," says Marese Farrell with a shudder. "It's frightening to know that the world you've lived in has actually been a lie, that the history that's written in our books is lies."

As I am a journalist for a national paper, Marese presumably believes that I'm part of this plot and yet she's friendly and eager for me to hear the talk she has helped to organise in McHugh's, an old-fashioned music venue at the back of a Drogheda pub. The main speaker is a man called Ian R Crane, a former oil-industry man from England, who now tours the world explaining how 9/11 was an act of "false flag" terrorism designed by the world's elite (the Illuminati) to usher in a "New World Order" during which we will all be microchipped and enslaved. The opening speaker is Jim Corr, an Irish pop star more accustomed to more salubrious surroundings, but who seems happy touring a string of small pub and hotel venues to propagate what most would consider to be wild conspiracy theories.

"I discovered some anomalies in the official stories of 9/11," he says, explaining his Damascene conversion to the cause four years before. His hair is closely cropped, he's wearing tinted glasses, a black suit jacket and an open-necked shirt, and as he talks he occasionally sips from a glass of Coke. "That got me studying further. I started listening to highly qualified independent architects and engineers and physics professors and structural engineers, listening to what they were saying about how the towers came down, and I kind of went from there, just building up my knowledge... I feel that there's a sea-swell of change happening in this country," he adds. "People are hungry for the truth."

Corr now concurs with an international community of "truthers" who not only believe that 9/11 was an inside job, but that peak oil, the fluoridation of drinking water and the banking crisis are all part of one big plot to enslave the common man.

"Have you encountered material like this before?" asks Marese's brother Martin, a cheerful, bearded, heavily tattooed man, with a tee-shirt proclaiming "Danger: New World Order Ahead". I tell him I have, but that I wasn't convinced. "Well, I think you'll be surprised by what Jim and Ian have to say," he says.

There are about 75 people present (making the venue look around half-full), from a variety of age groups and backgrounds, all happy to pay the €12 cover charge but few surprised by anything that's said over the course of the evening. (Many chip in during the talk, often finishing Jim and Ian's sentences with the names of significant figures, organisations, and nuggets of conspiracy lore.) "I was never really interested in Irish politics," says one, a scraggily bearded 19-year-old in combat trousers and a band tee-shirt, who eyes me nervously and won't tell me his name. "But then I saw a video about 9/11 online and it was much more interesting."

Many of the people I speak to were apolitical before an internet video or website instigated a political awakening and opened their eyes (usually to the 'reality' of 9/11 first and then to a wider world of conspiracism). Most have the cheerful zeal of friendly converts, casually listing hard-to-follow facts about the collapse of World Trade Centre 7 (the smaller building that collapsed shortly after the two towers) or the melting point of iron (a key fact in their argument against the conventional explanation for the towers' collapse). "In engineering terms a building can only fall one way," says Padraig Flynn, a calmly spoken, middle-aged engineer from just outside of town. "They wouldn't come down like that unless there was a controlled demolition making it happen. Physics doesn't allow it to happen the way it did."

And what do your friends make of these theories? I ask. He smiles. "The main response is, 'Don't worry about it, son.' But the great thing about Irish people is that although they can be conservative, they're open-minded. They'll at least have a look at the facts. That said, we can be very sheepish in this country. We're easily led."

A younger man called John Allen has even brought some of his doubting friends with him. "I think politics is all messed up," says his girlfriend Emer. "But I don't believe it's a conspiracy." John himself has been researching the events around 9/11 for a few years. "I always had my doubts about the 9/11 footage," he says. "I always thought that there was no way that it could have been done by just two planes. So I started looking into it on the internet."

He's hoping his friends will be convinced by what they see today, but he says he doesn't mind if they're not. "Fair play to Jim Corr for not just sitting back with his money and saying nothing," he adds. Were you a fan of his music? I ask. He laughs "No! If anything, that made it harder for me to buy into what he was saying!"

Although not generally Corrs fans, everyone I speak to is effusive in their praise of Jim. "You're a brave man if you're going to tell the truth!" says Paul Barnes, a grey-goateed poet who lives near Knowth. He's been interested in esoteric politics from a very young age. "When I was 14 I was a member of the Society of Psyche [sic] and Spiritual Studies," he says, before telling me about how Nikolai Tesla invented a free source of electricity which was then repressed by JP Morgan. "Do you understand the power of the mind?" he asks. "Humanity in general isn't aware of how powerful our minds are... but the elite are!" he adds ominously.

There's plenty of information about this shadowy élite in Jim Corr's speech. It begins with quotations about the New World Order from an array of historical figures (Woodrow Wilson to Tony Blair). He then speaks for over an hour about how 9/11 was covered up, how fluoridation of water and vaccines are being used to make populations placid, and how shadowy secret societies such as the Bilderberg Group are trying to control us. The financial crisis, he says, is also part of this process. Here his economic analysis is actually relatively uncontroversial, but he ends his presentation by projecting photos of political figures (from Nicholas Sarkozy to Michelle Obama) supposedly making the devil's horns symbol with their fingers to signal their membership of a secret elite.

At the interval, people go to refill their pints at the bar running along the back of the venue and truck driver Mick Acton tells me that though he has huge respect for Jim, he's heard nothing new. "Okay, there were a few extra details," he says. "But most of the stuff he talked about I'd seen before." Mick has been interested in the New World Order for decades, well before the current crop of internet-inspired believers. "It was harder to get access to the material back then, alright," he says, before telling me about how many of the predictions he's read over the years have come to pass. He seems pleased by this. He doesn't have much time for mainstream politics. "I grew up hating politics, really," he says. "I had no interest in it."

I bump into Martin again. "Converted yet?" he asks hopefully. I shake my head, he looks a bit disappointed and I feel bad. "Well, let's see how you feel after Ian's talk," he says.

If anything, Ian's talk makes me angry. Both speakers cover much the same territory, but while Jim is self-effacing, humble and passionate, Ian is pompous, self-congratulatory and a little too eager to please. He often contradicts himself to keep his audience onside. During the questions-and-answers session, one truther asks why the 9/11 attacks were made to look so obviously like a "fake". Ian, previously having made a case for the extreme efficiency of the shadowy elite, now says that they organised the 9/11 attacks to look fake on purpose. Later when Paul Barnes recounts an anecdote suggesting the Irish government actually knows nothing about the shadowy elite that controls it, Ian seems to agree. When another man insists the Irish government knows exactly what's going on and is in on the plot, Ian also seems to agree.

His prescription for resisting the New World Order is also strangely toothless. He says he can see a new wave of ordinary people who want the truth, but he rejects demonstrations or campaigns, advocating instead that people privately spread the word via their computer terminals. This inactivity is too much for one punter. "There was an incinerator built not three miles from this town, and no one came out to protest it," he tells me with a weary sigh. "I thought people were going to do something, but so much for a 'groundswell of people power!'"

For most, however, knowledge of 'the truth' seems to be enough. "I come from a family background where we were taught to actually see what's happening in the world," says Catríona, a young woman who works in the entertainment industry, "not like a lot of the sheep around the place," she adds with surprising vehemence.

In fact, far from being terrified by the implications of what they believe, nearly everyone I speak to seems to be happy (if not smug) about being in the know. I suppose on some level the notion of a shadowy elite secretly running the world is a comforting thought. Indeed, when Jim says, "A lot of people believe that this [the economic crisis] is about incompetence, but no, right at the top are financial wizards who know exactly what they're doing," it's hard not to think: "Thank God for that!"

Other audience members have more specific worries. "Jim, do you think Bono is globaliser?" one man asks. After four hours outlining the horrors of the New World Order, and implicating many powerful people in the process, it's the only time Jim Corr seems uncomfortable. He looks down and his voice tightens: "I'll get myself in trouble if I talk about Bono."