Absent MEP does country no favours: Brian Crowley should resign

With Brexit imminent, we need all help we can get to retain influence in the EU’s corridors of power, particularly the European parliament. That is why we cannot afford to have any of our parliamentary representatives not on their game.

MEP Brian Crowley is clearly and consistently not on his game. The longest-serving Irish MEP has hardly been seen in Europe or attended any parliament committees or contributed to any votes since his re-election in 2014.

Shortly after his re-election that year, Mr Crowley announced he was leaving the liberal ALDE (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe), of which Fianna Fáil is a member, and moving to ECR (European Conservatives and Reformists Group), a Euroscepic group set up by British Conservatives in 2009.

The move infuriated party leader Micheál Martin but, despite calls to expel him from the party, he remains Fianna Fáil’s only MEP, although no longer a member of the parliamentary party.

At the time of the move, Mr Crowley declared that “my new group will allow me work more effectively for my constituents in Ireland South.”

Yet ever since, he has done anything but work effectively.

He is a full member of the parliament’s legal affairs committee and a substitute member of the industry, research and energy group, yet he has made no public contributions to either of those committees or in the EU parliament over the past four years.

According to VoteWatch Europe, a think-tank which tracks parliament votes and actions, Mr Crowley’s voting record ranks 751st out of the 751 MEPs. That is an unenviable record, by any stretch.

However, he is still entitled to a monthly salary of €8,484.05, as well as a €4,342 monthly expenditure allowance to cover office rent and constituency activities.

Mr Crowley, who uses a wheelchair due to an accident when he was a teenager, has been in and out of hospital at various times for surgery and, as a consequence, has been generally unwell. He is currently on sick leave.

As such, he is entitled to a certain degree of sympathy for his ongoing illness but he is not entitled to continue being paid handsomely to represent his country when he is clearly not in a position to do so.

We cannot afford to have someone who is either unable or unwilling to represent us. It creates a democratic deficit and undermines the position of our ten other MEPs.

His prolonged absence and continuing refusal to address it in any meaningful way does a grave disservice to the European Parliament, the country he represents and the Irish people who voted him in.

That is something of which Micheal Martin must be acutely aware. It is incumbent on him, as party leader, to persuade Mr Crowley to resign his seat and not leave him in situ until parliamentary elections next year.

Mr Crowley’s absence has profound implications. Following a vote in the European Parliament last February, Ireland is set to get two more MEPs after the UK leaves the union. But it is not a done deal and remaining complicit in allowing this situation to continue could scupper it.