 The paper featured Irish ballads and poetry, articles about Irish history, and a regular column by John Martin reporting on the situation of the Repeal Movement (campaigning to repeal the Act of Union under which the Irish Parliament had been abolished).There were also local news of the Irish deportee community, then numbering in the thousands, and of Hobart Town daily life in general.O'Donoghue used "The Irish Exile" to publish excerpts of his journal aboard "The Swift", which were reprinted in Australian, British and Irish newspapers.