Sandwich tycoon in FG bid

The founder of the multi-million O’Brien’s Sandwich Bars business today said he would strive to bring back traditional family values into society if he won a Fine Gael Dáil seat.

Mr Brody Sweeney was today unveiled as the opposition party’s surprise candidate to seek a nomination for the Dublin North East constituency at the next General Election.

The 44-year-old said he had approached the party himself to seek the nomination and denied that he had been offered any front bench position if he won a seat.

He said: “I feel no sense of being parachuted in. I intend to get a nomination on my own merits not on the imprimatur of the party.

“We have everything materialistically, yet we also have nothing. There’s an emptiness inside. We are missing the important stuff.”

Mr Brody, who now has 230 O’Brien’s stores in four continents, has already set up a constituency office in Raheny.

Launching the nomination bid today Fine Gael party leader, Enda Kenny, said he hoped to boost a number of Dáil TD’s in Dublin which currently number three.

The party received 2,349 votes in the three-seater constituency in the 2002 General Election.

Mr Kenny said: “Mr Sweeney is a man with a national and international business reputation and can bring a lot of specialist skills and experience to politics if nominated.”

Mr Sweeney also launched a personal policy strategy today which called for more Government investment in agriculture, food production and tourism.

He said: “We need more indigenous investment in these small industries because if you take out the multi-nationals from our economy there would be no Celtic tiger.”