Childers condemns Hogan’s EU nomination

Independent MEP Nessa Childers has said the nomination of Phil Hogan as Ireland’s Commissioner-designate is a step backwards for equality and told the European Parliament’s second largest grouping of MEPs that she has serious reservations considering his appointment to the Commission.

In a letter to the 192 members of the European Parliament’s Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats&, Ms Childers said that the then-local government minister’s intervention in the case of a Traveller family who were seeking local authority housing from Kilkenny County Council in 2012 was “tantamount to discriminatory behaviour that flies in the face of EU fundamental rights principles and legislation.”

“As a representative of all Irish citizens, including ethnic minorities such as the Traveller community, I must bring to your attention facts which were confirmed and defended by Mr Hogan himself. These, I believe, are incompatible with the proper discharge of the duties incumbent upon a European Commissioner,” Ms Childers wrote in the letter, dated September 1.