Joe Higgins

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Joe Higgins
Joe Higgins
Former TD, activist
In office
1997 – 2007
Constituency Dublin West
Born May 1, 1949 (1949-05-01) (age 59)
Flag of Ireland Lios Póil, Kerry, Ireland
Nationality Irish
Political party Socialist Party
Religion None (Atheist)

Joe Higgins (born 1 May 1949) is an Irish Socialist Party representative. He was the sole Socialist Party Teachta Dála (TD) from 1997–2007, representing the Dublin West constituency.

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[edit] Early life

One of nine children of a small farming family, he was born in 1949 in the Gaeltacht area of Lios Póil in County Kerry. He went to school in Dingle Christian Brothers School, and after finishing he enrolled in the priesthood. As part of his training he was sent to a Catholic seminary school in Minnesota, U.S. in the 1960s.

It was against the backdrop of anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement that Higgins was politicised. He is now an atheist and has said of his time in seminary school:

“ What choice did you have in Ireland, especially in my time, when you had the Catholic faith inculcated in you from when you were baptised? Then you get to think critically for yourself. ”

[edit] Political life

He returned to Ireland and attended University College Dublin studying English and French. For several years he was a teacher in some of Dublin's inner city schools. While at university he joined the Irish Labour Party and became active in the Militant Tendency, an entryist Trotskyist group that operated within Labour. Throughout his time in the Labour Party he was a strong opponent of coalition politics. He was elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s. In 1989 Higgins was expelled alongside other members of Militant. The group eventually left the party and formed Militant Labour which became the Socialist Party in 1996.

Higgins promised to accept only an average worker's wage and thus accepted less than half his TD's salary, donating the rest to the party and to progressive campaigns. Higgins was elected to Dublin County Council in 1991 and was until 2004 a member of Fingal County Council, at which point his seat was taken by fellow Socialist Party member Ruth Coppinger. In 1996, he campaigned against water charges and came within 270 votes of preventing Brian Lenihan, Jnr from taking his late father's Dáil seat in the Dublin West by-election. He was first elected to the Dáil in the 1997 general election and re-elected in the 2002 general election. He contested the 2007 general election held on May 24, 2007, but narrowly lost out for the last seat.

In the European Parliament elections in 2004, Higgins received 23,200 (5.5 percent) votes in the Dublin constituency, double his 1999 result, but missed out on a seat.

He spent one month in Mountjoy Prison in 2003 as a result of his protest against the non-collection of refuse in his constituency during the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign.[1] He was also prominent in the successful 2005 campaign to bring Nigerian school student Olukunle Eluhanla back to Ireland, after had been deported by the Garda National Immigration Bureau.[2] Higgins remains an opponent of the deportation policy.

Joe Higgins speaking in Dublin June 25, 2004
Joe Higgins speaking in Dublin June 25, 2004

Higgins also used his platform in the Dáil to raise the issue of exploitation of migrant and guest workers in Ireland. Higgins and others claimed that many companies were paying migrants below the minimum wage and in some cases not paying overtime rates. In March 2005, Higgins and a delegation of Turkish ex-employees of GAMA Endustri, a Turkish construction firm working in Ireland, traveled to Amsterdam where they discovered that GAMA had been secreting up to €30 million in workers' wages without the knowledge of the workers.[3][4]

From 2002 to 2007 he was the leader of the Technical Group in the Dáil which consisted of Independents and small parties grouped together for speaking time. Higgins was widely regarded as the wittiest speaker in Dáil Eireann and was regarded as one of few opposition leaders able to successfully criticise Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

In one debate there Justice Minister Michael McDowell said to him "I do not take lectures on democracy from a Trotskyite communist like Deputy Joe Higgins. I know what he really wants to do."


Higgins did not win re-election in 2007, confounding a prediction by RTÉ[5]. Although the Socialist Party gained nearly as many votes in other constituencies as it had in 2002, first preference votes for Higgins in Dublin West declined by more than 20 percent. Higgins ascribes the loss of his seat to the fact the constituency boundaries had not been redrawn to allow for the population increase.

Oireachtas
Preceded by
Joan Burton
(Labour)		 Teachta Dála for Dublin West
1997–2007		 Succeeded by
Leo Varadkar
(Fine Gael)

[edit] Related links

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jailed politicians 'grandstanding', says Cullen. RTÉ (19 September 2003). Retrieved on 2007-04-29.
  2. ^ Alison O'Connor (17 April 2005). All that's left?. The Sunday Business Post. Retrieved on 2007-04-29.
  3. ^ Higgins deems GAMA accounts 'sensational'. RTÉ (31 March 2005). Retrieved on 2007-04-29.
  4. ^ Gama to provide bank account details. RTÉ (8 April 2005). Retrieved on 2007-04-29.
  5. ^ RTÉ Election 2007. RTÉ. Retrieved on 2007-05-26.

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This page incorporates information from the Oireachtas Members Database

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