Independent TD Michael Collins rules out joining Farmers Alliance

Michael Collins planning on forming a new grouping ahead of elections next year

Independent TD Michael Collins said any new grouping would be different from the current Rural Independents and would represent people from both rural and urban areas.

Independent TD Michael Collins has said that he has no interest in joining the new Farmers Alliance (FA) political party.

The West Cork TD told the Irish Examiner that he was not involved in discussions to join the new political party, which was announced in recent days.

“We never had a sit-around-the-table discussion with them. They might dig out an invitation now at some stage but there were never real serious intent to discuss the set-up of anything as from my side,” Mr Collins said.

He said that the party appeared to be a group of concerned individuals who were “dead right” to be concerned, saying that rural Ireland was being “hammered left, right, and centre”.

The Irish Examiner contacted the Farmers Alliance for comment on their establishment, but none was received ahead of publication.

However, two founders of the party — Helen O’Sullivan and Liam McLoughlin — appeared on Newstalk earlier this week, where they answered questions about the newly established party.

Asked if they both intended to run in the upcoming general election, both Ms O’Sullivan and Mr McLoughlin did not confirm whether or not they would be running. The two founders both said that they had previously been asked, but would need to consider it.

However, Mr McLoughlin said that he hoped there would be between 50 and 60 candidates fielded by the party in the next general election.

For comparison, in the 2020 General Election, the highest number of candidates run by any political party was Fianna Fáil, who ran 84. Fine Gael ran 82, and Sinn Féin ran 42.

In recent months, there has been discussion from several rural TDs about establishing a rural political party, with Independent TD for Roscommon-Galway Michael Fitzmaurice spearheading one approach, while the Rural Independents intend on expanding their alliance.

New grouping

Mr Collins, who currently sits with the Rural Independent grouping of TDs, said that he and his colleagues were planning on forming a new grouping ahead of the local and European elections next year.

He said that any new grouping would be slightly different from the current Rural Independents, saying that it was important it represented people from both rural and urban areas.

“I haven't had any discussions with this group [Farmers Alliance] because we have a strong group being set up at the present moment ourselves,” Mr Collins said.

“We're working on that and that is going to be very much representative of rural and urban Ireland.”

He cited the Dutch Farmer-Citizen Movement, which swept the provincial elections in the Netherlands earlier this year, gaining 137 seats.

The party itself received almost 1.5m votes in the provincial elections, with Mr Collins saying that this was due to the party appealing to both rural and urban voters.

“Not alone did they sell themselves to the rural people, they sold themselves to the urban people also if they were able to pick up 1.5 million votes.

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“That's the kind of setup I'd like, where rural issues would be very, very important to us, but also there’s urban issues too that are not being discussed or being dealt with in this country.

“That’s where we’re focused very clearly and if we’re to be part of any group, it has to have both.”

Mr Collins hoped that the new group would be announced “in the weeks ahead” and that discussions were currently ongoing with TDs and councillors about its establishment.