Chemical millionaire’ to drop shares

Dan Collins

Deputy Ciaran Cuffe, a founder of the party, has stressed that his shares in companies, which have been found guilty of serious environmental offences, were inherited from his late mother.

The Green Party TD for Dun Laoghaire and environment spokesman has, according to his declaration of interests, shares in Chevron Texaco, which was fined for pollution offences in Angola; General Electric, which has a nuclear division and arms links and Procter & Gamble which was convicted of water pollution in

Nenagh.

The environmentalist politician also earns dividends from the activities of Schering Plough, which was fined for breaches of drug manufacturing standards and Johnson & Johnson one of the world’s top five companies involved in animal vivisection.

“I have no wish to invest in companies with a bad environmental track record, and I intend making significant changes,” Deputy Cuffe said yesterday.

His brief statement was issued in the wake of a whistle-blowing article in a Sunday newspaper entitled ‘Green Party TD is a chemical millionaire’.

He was reported as saying he saw no conflict of interests in holding shares and being a Green Party TD and stated that “the shares detailed in the article were inherited from his mother who passed away.

The shares were “under review to weed-out any unethical shares,” he stated.

The Green Party selected Mr Cuffe in 2000 to successfully contest the Dáil elections in the Dun Laoghaire constituency.

Mr Cuffe was an architect and planner from Shankill, Co Dublin, a founding member of the Green Party and a councillor since 1991.