LAST UPDATE | 24 Jan
PEOPLE BEFORE PROFIT TD Bríd Smith will contest the Dublin seat in the upcoming European elections.
Smith has been announced alongside Dr Brian O’Boyle who will run in Midlands North-West and Cian Prendiville who will run in the Ireland South constituency for People Before Profit.
In July last year, Smith announced that she would not seek re-election to the Dáil at the end of this term.
At the time the Dublin South Central TD said it was time to make way for the new generation of “younger working class people” who can “tell it like it is”.
Smith previously stood in the European elections in 2014 but was not elected.
In 2016 she was elected to the Dáil and before this served as a councillor on Dublin City Council for the Ballyfermot/Drimnagh area.
Speaking at a press conference in Dublin today, Smith said she made the decision to run for Europe after being approached by the party before Christmas.
She said “hand on heart” she had no intention of running for Europe when she made the announcement in the summer that she would not contest the next general election.
Smith explained that it was the situation in Gaza that prompted her decision to run for Europe.
“If you look across the world at the moment, we’re not calling it a World War, but the world is at war. And in Europe, in particular, there’s a sort of a poly crisis taking place.
“You have a crisis of the cost of living, the crisis of war, migration, environment, workers rights, there’s so many conflating things,” Smith said.
She explained that if elected she would like to work towards tackling these issues and deal with them in a more connected way than is currently done.
Other candidates
Alongside Smith, Dr Brian O’Boyle will run for People Before Profit in Midlands North-West and Cian Prendiville will run in Ireland South.
O’Boyle, a member of People Before Profit for almost 20 years, is a lecturer at Atlantic Technological University in Sligo where he lives with his partner and their children.
He is the co-author of a number of books, including Austerity Ireland (2013) and Tax Haven Ireland (2021).
O’Boyle said today he is running in the election to highlight that the vast wealth created in Europe is going to 1% of the population and causing massive “misery”.
“I think it’s important that we have politicians, activists, who are going to stand for a different kind of Europe,” he said.
Prendiville who will contest a seat in Ireland South is a former councillor in Limerick city and was heavily involved in the anti-water charges movement.
Prendiville said today he is running to help build a people-powered movement on housing, climate and Palestine and “against the rule of the billionaires and against the far-right snake oil salesmen”.
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This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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