Joe Higgins (politician)

Joe Higgins (born 20 May 1949) is an Irish former Socialist Party politician who served as a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency from 1997 to 2007 and from 2011 to 2016.

One of nine children of a small farming family, Higgins was born in 1949 in Lispole, part of the Dingle Gaeltacht in County Kerry.

He went to school in the 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, United States in the 1960s.

Higgins became politicised at the time of anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement.

He is a brother of Liam Higgins, who played football with the Kerry GAA senior team in the 1960s and 1970s.

Higgins is bilingual in English and Irish.

Higgins returned to Ireland and attended University College Dublin, studying English and French.

For several years he was a teacher in several Dublin inner city schools.

While at university he joined the Labour Party and became active in the Militant Tendency, an entryist Trotskyist group that operated within the Labour Party.

Throughout his time in the Labour Party he was a strong opponent of coalition politics, along with TDs Emmet Stagg and Michael D. Higgins.

He was elected to the Administrative Council of the Labour Party by the membership in the 1980s.

In 1989, Higgins was expelled alongside 13 other members of Militant Tendency by party leader Dick Spring.

He was elected to Dublin County Council in 1991 for the Mulhuddart electoral area, and was until 2003 a member of Fingal County Council.

The group eventually left the party and formed Militant Labour, which became the Socialist Party in 1996.

Higgins spent over half his salary on the Socialist Party and causes he supported.

In 1996, he campaigned against local authority water and refuse charges and contested the Dublin West by-election, losing narrowly to Brian Lenihan Jnr.

Higgins was first elected to Dáil Éireann at the 1997 general election, and re-elected at the 2002 general election.

From 2002 to 2007, he was a member of the Technical Group in the Dáil which consisted of various Independent TDs, Sinn Féin and the Green Party grouped together for better speaking time.

In 2003, Higgins accused Taoiseach Bertie Ahern of having "blood on his hands" in relation to the use of Shannon Airport by American troops.

He spoke out against the Iraq War while a TD, and addressed the Dublin leg of the 20 March 2003 International Day of Action.

In April 2003, Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell addressed Higgins during a Dáil debate, saying "I do not take lectures on democracy from a Trotskyite communist like Deputy Joe Higgins."

On 19 September 2003, Higgins was sentenced to one month in Mountjoy Prison as a result of his protest against the non-collection of refuse in his constituency during the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign.

When President Mary McAleese telephoned Higgins in 2004 to inform him of her decision to seek re-election, he told her that her office was "superfluous and should be abolished".

McAleese was reported to have been left speechless.

At the 2004 European Parliament election, Higgins received 23,200 (5.5%) votes in the Dublin constituency, double his 1999 result, but did not win a seat.

Higgins used his platform in the Dáil to raise the issue of exploitation of migrant and guest workers in Ireland.

He and others claimed that many companies were paying migrants below the minimum wage and, in some cases, not paying overtime rates.

He was also prominent in the successful 2005 campaign to bring Nigerian school student Olukunle Eluhanla back to Ireland after he had been deported.

Higgins remains an opponent of the deportation policy.

In March 2005, Higgins and a delegation of Turkish ex-employees of GAMA Endustri, a Turkish construction firm working in Ireland, travelled to Amsterdam, Netherlands, where they discovered that GAMA had been secreting up to €30 million in workers' wages without their knowledge.

He expressed opposition in the Dáil to the jailing of the Rossport Five in July 2005.

He raised the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in the Dáil in November 2005, requesting new legislation to regulate what he described as "these modern slavers".

In May 2006, Higgins boycotted an address to the Dáil by Australian Prime Minister John Howard owing to Australia's role in the Iraq War, the country's "criminal" legislation on worker's rights, and its theft of oil and gas from the poor people of East Timor, describing it as "reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher".

In October 2006, Higgins requested the suspension of normal business in the Dáil after it emerged that Ryanair had upped its share in Aer Lingus overnight, amid concerns for workers' rights and passenger welfare.

He lost his seat at the 2007 general election, but regained it at the 2011 general election.

In 2008, Higgins was a political opponent of the Irish government's first Treaty of Lisbon referendum.

He described the success of the "No" campaign as "a huge rebuff to the Irish political establishment".

He served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency from 2009 to 2011.

Higgins successfully contested the 2009 European Parliament election for the Dublin constituency, beating two incumbents, Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Féin and Eoin Ryan of Fianna Fáil, for the third and final seat.