Childers: "I’ve always represented the people not being heard"

The past is a different country for Nessa Childers.

Her past includes a father who was president of Ireland, and a grandfather who died for Ireland at the hands of a firing squad, but those are matters of pride rather than sensitivity.

It’s her own political past that is the touchy subject. She is running as an Independent for the European parliament, having jumped ship from the Labour Party, on whose ticket she was first elected in 2009. Before that, she was councillor for the Greens, but leaped from their decks to join Labour in 2008, a few weeks before she was selected by the latter to stand for Europe. Ms Childers is fed up with journalists traipsing over her past.