Some people don't take governments word as truth and so embark on some research beyond that of the high definition plasma tv.
And in some, not all cases, they discover that their reasons to not take governments word as truth were well founded.
Some people think nothing is a conspiracy. And therefore educate themselves on Irish and world affairs through the Sunday papers and Sky News.
It seems odd that the mere mention of the work conspiracy causes most (vocal) people to reflexively dismiss the possibility. However, conspiracies do happen? Retort 1: yes, they happen but only in pockets on on a small scale. Retort 2: well they happen, but big conspiracies are a phenomena of the distant past (e.g. Third Reich) and cannot re-occur in the context of a dominant Western ideology and democracy.
But surely a global conspiracy is acknowledged to have taken place right up to the present?? I'm referring to the Catholic Church. This involved the systematic and nightmarish rape of children across virtually every diocese, in every country on the planet. The cover-up was sustained to such an extent, going all the way to the top (Holy See) that it cannot be described as anything less than a full-blown, global conspiracy.
So there you have it, the unthinkable can happen. Governments, just like Churches or other institutions can collude to cover it up. In the not so distant past anyone who talked about this GLOBAL conspiracy were dismissed as nuts! I am sure political leaders were advised of the scale of the problem, but did nothing. Journalists knew (unless they were brain-dead) and did nothing for decades. And how many priests went to jail (a handful, with even those taking the form of deals)? How many Bishops (zero)?
So conspiracies do not have some default form, i.e. isolated, short-lived, revolving around a single incident, confined to one area etc. IT can happen, be perpetuated, and what do we do... carry on regardless?