Frustrated Green candidates launch bitter attacks on opponents

THE Green Party’s European candidates have revealed the depth of their frustration with opponents.

Senator Dan Boyle, who is standing for the party in Ireland South, launched a scathing attack on the Labour Party candidate, Senator Alan Kelly, suggesting that he was abusing his Oireachtas position.

Senator Deirdre de Burca, who is standing for the Greens in Dublin, criticised the party’s former MEP, Patricia McKenna, running as an Independent in the same constituency.

There are three seats in both Dublin and South, but neither Green candidate is showing strongly.

Mr Boyle conceded yesterday that the first two seats in South were likely to go to Fianna Fáil’s Brian Crowley and Fine Gael’s Sean Kelly, but insisted he had a chance of taking the third seat, along with a number of others.

Yet a recent opinion poll showed Mr Boyle on just 3%, some seven points behind Mr Kelly, who appears best placed at this point to take the third seat.

Mr Boyle said he was running his campaign on a “Green Party shoestring model” and didn’t have the “very questionable resources” of other candidates. In a direct attack on Mr Kelly, he said: “I find it very strange that the politician who receives the biggest number of donations in the last calendar year, 2008 – we’ve no figures for 2009 – is a Labour Party candidate who has never contested a public election before.”

This was a reference to the fact that Mr Kelly declared the highest amount of donations of any politician to the State ethics watchdog for 2008.

Mr Boyle said he was “not particularly happy” about this situation. “It does talk about the ability to influence – unfairly, I believe – any election when an individual without any particular background can acquire such sums of money and deploy them in an election like this on a first-time basis. I think we saw a similar situation with Libertas in the Lisbon referendum as well.”

He also claimed that because Mr Kelly participated infrequently in Seanad votes, the Labour senator was using his Oireachtas salary to boost his election campaign.

“I see that, in effect, as using an Oireachtas salary to subsidise a campaign, which is another abuse,” Mr Boyle said.

Ms de Burca, meanwhile, sought to emphasise that Ms McKenna was not a Green Party candidate, after the same opinion poll showed the latter performing more strongly. Ms McKenna is on 8%, according to the poll, two points ahead of Ms de Burca.

“Patricia McKenna is running as an Independent candidate. She is not a Green Party candidate, she differs very fundamentally in the attitude of most Green Party members to the European Union,” Ms de Burca said.