De Burca admits regaining Green EU seat will be ‘tough’ task
Ms de Burca was yesterday unveiled as the Green’s candidate for the Dublin constituency in next year’s European elections — after being the only person to seek the nomination.
When nominations closed at noon yesterday, the former Wicklow councillor was the only person to have put her name forward.
Patricia McKenna, who lost her seat as a Green MEP in 2004, was expected to seek the nomination and go head-to-head with Ms de Burca in a party convention, scheduled for September 13.
But Ms McKenna revealed last week that she would not seek the nomination because she would be forced to toe the party line.
She intends to run in the Dublin constituency in “another political guise”, possibly as an independent, or part of the People’s Movement, who she campaigned with against the Lisbon treaty.
“If I ran for the Greens, I would be asked to toe the parliamentary party line and — if issues arise in relation to militarisation and Lisbon — to stay quiet in the European Parliament. But I would, as I have done in the past, have to speak out,” she said in an interview with Hot Press magazine.
Ms de Burca will be formally announced as a candidate in Dublin’s Liberty Hall on September 13.
The former primary school teacher contested a seat in Wicklow in last year’s general election but, with just 7% of the vote, missed out on a seat.
Yesterday she insisted she is the person “best positioned to increase the Green party’s strong vote in Dublin” and to re-take the European Parliament seat.
“I believe that I can do this because I am originally from Dublin and, while my political base is in Bray and Co Wicklow, I am very familiar with the issues that affect the Greater Dublin area, such as planning, transport, waste, infrastructure, education and health,” she said.
Dublin will be reduced to a three seat constituency in next June’s elections.
The current MEPs are Fianna Fáil’s Eoin Ryan, Fine Gael’s Gay Mitchell, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Proinsias de Rossa of the Labour party.
