Mick Finnegan

Mick Finnegan is the President of the Workers' Party of Ireland ^[1] having been elected to that position on 17 May 2008 at the party's Ard Fheis / Annual Delegate conference to replace Sean Garland who retired after ten years in the position.

Finnegan is originally from near Bailieborough, County Cavan, but has spent most of his life in Dublin.

He worked for many years in the construction industry in both Great Britain and Ireland and was a shop steward in the Dublin Construction Branch of the then Irish Transport and General Workers Union (now SIPTU), before becoming a fulltime branch official.^[2]

After joining Official Sinn Féin in the late 1960s Finnegan became active in many agitations and political actions by the party, especially the housing campaigns and later played an important role in exposing political corruption in the planning process in West Dublin where he and his wife Anne formed a pressure group in the Lucan/Clondalkin area against this corruption.

Finnegan contested the 1981 Irish general election for the Workers' Party (then known as Sinn Féin The Workers Party) in Dublin West, polling 0.7%, as a second candidate to Tomás Mac Giolla who was to be elected in the constituency in the November 1982 general election and the 2007 general election in Dublin Mid West, polling 0.98%. He also unsuccessfully contested the 1999 Irish local elections, polling 3.4% of the vote and the 2009 local elections in the Lucan electoral area, polling 4.6% of the vote.^[3]

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