she called to my home in Shankill to discuss the possibility of standing as a Labour candidate for Europe in the Leinster constituency. She agreed to stand and we discussed the choreography for her to leave the Green Party and announce her candidacy. I advised her to avoid bitterness in her resignation from the Greens.
Liz McManus undertook to manage Nessa’s campaign, which was often rocky. Nessa had difficulties during some local radio debates. I recall offering words of encouragement to her during canvasses in Kilkenny and in Kells. Fine Gael’s Avril Doyle tore into her, an approach which, in the end, backfired to Nessa’s benefit. A colour piece by Lise Hand in the Irish Independent gave a flavour of the campaign:
... while Nessa is obviously sincere, it’s hard to get to grips with which issues she really feels passionately about. Ask her what her Big Issue is, and she simply sticks to the party line. ‘The’ answer that all the Labour Party candidates will give is jobs, and going out to Europe and representing people with integrity and competence’.
In Hennessey’s sports shop, Eamon and Nessa pose for photographs brandishing a pair of hurleys. Eamon gently pokes the candidate in the side with the stick. ‘A’ dig in the ribs –– this is how to do it, Avril, sorry, Nessa,’ he grins.
Outside of Galway City and Sligo, Labour had only a patchy organisation in Connaught/Ulster or the Ireland North-West constituency. There was no obvious candidate, and those who had stood in the previous two European elections had fared badly.
Former Labour Senator Kathleen O’Meara mentioned Susan O’Keeffe to me. Susan was the Grenada TV journalist who, in 1991, had made a documentary about the Irish beef industry which led to the establishment of the Beef Tribunal. Susan herself was the only one to be subsequently brought to court in connection with the broadcast. She was still working as a journalist and living in Sligo. She is a woman of great personal courage, and displayed it once again in standing for Labour in the North-West constituency, in effect risking her professional career.
She was a determined candidate, and raised many issues including the inadequacy of cancer services in the North-West. She debated effectively in the media with Declan Ganley, who, despite his high profile in European referenda, ran unsuccessfully as a Libertas candidate. Though she didn’t get elected, Susan polled a very respectable 28,708 votes, which set her up as a possible Dáil candidate for the future. Happily, Ganley called a recount and while it didn’t help him, an extra 2,000 votes were found for O’Keeffe. This brought her over the threshold for a State refund of election expenses. Ganley’s recount ended up benefitting the Labour Party by €38,000.
Proinsias de Rossa was comfortably elected in Dublin, as was Nessa Childers in Leinster. Alan Kelly’s result was a closer call, the count going to the very end before he became the third Labour MEP elected. I travelled to Cork to celebrate Labour’s best European Election since 1979, and indeed Labour’s best ever local elections. We won 132 city and county council seats, resulting in the highest numbers of Labour councillors since the foundation of the State.
I was the toast of the Party of European Socialists leaders’ meeting the following week in Brussels. Overall, it had not been a particularly good election for Europe’s social democratic parties, and in the post-election analysis, the party leaders felt that in the election the PES should have put forward a name for President of the European Commission. José Manuel Barroso was about to be re-appointed by default. The idea was born, that in future EU Parliament elections, the European parties should nominate candidates for the office of Commission President.
Europe continued to dominate the Irish political agenda through the summer and early autumn. The Government had negotiated some important changes to the original Lisbon Treaty to address the principal concerns of Irish voters in the referendum the previous summer. Each country would have the right to nominate a commissioner. Binding protocols would be added to the European treaties to guarantee Ireland’s neutrality and to underpin Ireland’s constitutional position on abortion.
A second referendum on Lisbon was set for 2 October. The campaign was difficult, and Labour’s pro-European position was attacked by Sinn Féin and the ultra-left, who had always opposed the European Union and who had campaigned for a no vote in every referendum to date. The Treaty was comfortably passed. I got a congratulatory telephone call from Commission President José Manuel Barroso.
Later the same day, at the Dublin count centre in the RDS, a journalist from the Sunday Tribune asked me for my reaction to documents the Ceann Comhairle, John O’Donoghue, had just released about his expenses. As I hadn’t seen the material, I gave only a vague comment, and undertook to examine the matter.
Earlier in the summer, O’Donoghue had come under pressure when the Sunday Tribune published details of expenses he had claimed for while he had served as Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism. They included the hire of a limousine to transfer him between terminals at Heathrow Airport at a cost of €472, and the hiring of a car at the State’s expense for the duration of the Cheltenham Races. As the recession and cutbacks were impacting hard on the public, there was, understandably, considerable anger at such waste of taxpayer’s money. We heard complaints about the issue repeatedly during our canvass on the Lisbon Treaty. But O’Donoghue stuck to the line that as Ceann Comhairle he could not become involved in a controversy over a matter which arose while he was a minister. He left it to the Department to respond.
The Labour Party had issued a number of statements on the controversy, calling on O’Donoghue to explain his actions. I considered him to be a fair and very competent Ceann Comhairle, and I respected his office and the idea that it ought to be kept out of public controversy if at all possible. However, the latest information related to expenses he had incurred since he was appointed Ceann Comhairle and appeared to me to suggest an entirely unacceptable, sustained pattern of extravagance. I believed that the new revelations would bring the office of Ceann Comhairle, the Dáil, and the body politic into disrepute, and that firm and decisive political action needed to be taken to deal with the controversy. I felt this should be done on an all-party basis, and so I wrote to the leaders of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and the Green Party, suggesting a meeting of Party Leaders to consider the matter. I asked for a response in advance of the resumption of the Dáil at 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday 6 October.
Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin replied, agreeing to meet; Enda Kenny said he had ‘no objection to such a meeting, but for it to be worthwhile it must be attended by all leaders including the Taoiseach. I am prepared to participate on that basis.’ Brian Cowen replied on the day of the meeting, saying he did not agree to it: ‘In view of the Ceann Comhairle’s stated intention to make proposals to the meeting of the Oireachtas Commission to be held tomorrow, I believe that is the most appropriate forum in which to pursue these issues.’ The Oireachtas Commission is the body which oversees the Houses of the Oireachtas and is chaired by the Ceann Comhairle himself. It meets in private. Five of the eleven members represent the Seanad. In a statement responding to the Taoiseach’s proposal, I pointed out that ‘the Oireachtas Commission is primarily an administrative body. This is a political problem, which must be dealt with through the political process.’
I was disappointed with Cowen’s refusal to have a meeting of Party Leaders. It meant the O’Donoghue issue, already dominating the airwaves, would now have to be raised on the floor of the Dáil. There was growing public anger about it, and it was being made very clear to the Labour Party that people expected the opposition to do its duty and to confront the problem head on.
I travelled to Tralee to address the SIPTU Conference on Monday 7 October and discussed the matter at length with Mark Garrett over dinner in a restaurant in Adare, County Limerick. After my speech on Tuesday morning, members of the press asked me if I intended to raise the O’Donoghue issue at Leaders’ Questions later that afternoon. I confirmed that I did.
On the drive back to Dublin, I got a call from O’Donoghue
