FIANNA FÁIL WILL today pick its candidate for the European elections in Dublin with a councillor, a former senator and an LGBT activist in the running.
Either Mary Fitzpatrick (above centre), Geraldine Feeney (right) or Tiernan Brady (left) will be selected by hundreds of Fianna Fáil members in the capital later today with the winning candidate looking to take one of three available seats in the European Parliament this May.
The selection convention will operate on a one member-one vote basis with Fitzpatrick being tipped to take the nomination.
The Dublin city councillor leads the Fianna Fáil group on the council and came to prominence in the 2007 general election after she missed out on a seat despite polling nearly twice as many first preference votes as fellow Fianna Fáil candidate Cyprian Brady.
Brady took the final seat in the four-seat constituency thanks to then-taoiseach Bertie Ahern’s transfers. A late leaflet drop in the competitive Dublin Central urged voters to give Ahern their number one, and Brady their number two, leaving Fitzpatrick to claim that she had been “shafted”.
Fitzpatrick later outpolled Brady on the first count at the 2011 general election but neither were elected and Fitzpatrick subsequently missed out on election to the Seanad.
The Seanad is where Geraldine Feeney has made her name and reputation serving two terms in the upper house which she claims offers her the national legislative experience that the two other candidates don’t have.
Tiernan Brady, the director of the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network (GLEN), does have some legislative experience having worked as a staffer with current North West MEP Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher.
Laterly he has been a prominent voice on LGBT issues and his campaign is notable for him encouraging all other candidates to commit to serving a full five-year term in the European Parliament given that two of the three MEPs elected for Dublin in 2009 are no longer serving.
We’ll find out which one of them will be the party’s candidate in Dublin before 5pm this evening.
Image: Fianna Fáil/Nicky Ryan
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