Cuffe 'naïve' over shares

A Green Party politician accused of being a “chemical millionaire” admitted today he was naive to hold shares linked to chemical dumping and arms.

Ciaran Cuffe said he was uncomfortable with certain shares in his €1.1m portfolio but had not chosen them himself.

The party’s environment spokesman inherited them when his mother died but had been too busy to get rid of those with a bad environmental record.

A Sunday newspaper revealed that Mr Cuffe had one of the most valuable equity portfolios of any Oireachtas member and that many of his shares were in “politically incorrect” ventures.

Immediately afterwards he released a statement vowing to weed out any unethical shares.

Today he said: “I think it was naive of me. I think I should have moved sooner on it.

“I certainly regret not having done more about this before and I certainly intend to make changes now.”

Yesterday’s article said many of the companies that the Dun Laoghaire TD had invested in featured in environmentalist concerns over the years.

They included a firm reported to have been fined for pollution in Angola, one excluded from the Catholic Church’s investment list due to arms links and chemical dumping, and a company found guilty of contaminating a river.

He was also reported to have shares in a firm fined for breaching drug-manufacturing standards and one involved in animal testing.

Mr Cuffe added: “I did not choose the shares.

“I inherited them from my mother, she died three years ago and I received most of this after the will was sorted out.

“I should have paid attention to this sooner.

“It has been a busy year for me, I was elected a year ago.

“With my second son being born eight months ago, it had been on my mind but it has been busy.

He admitted that he was uncomfortable with his portfolio.

“I had intended doing something about it before this story broke,” he said.

“I contacted the bank and told them I wanted to stay away from arms and nuclear companies and that sort of thing.

“I now intend to go a lot further and I intend to get rid of the shares that have a bad record on environmental issues.”

He said he would get rid of the shares “within a matter of months, if not weeks“.

Mr Cuffe has been a prominent campaigner in the bid to close down Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant in Cumbria, claiming discharges from the site are polluting the Irish Sea.

He was recently pictured hugging a tree on O’Connell Street in protest at plans to cut down the historic London plane trees.