Former MEP and TD Mick Wallace has announced he will stand in the Wexford constituency in the general election.
Mr Wallace made his announcement on South East Radio’s Morning Mix programme on Friday just two weeks before the election is due to take place.
Wexford is likely to be an extremely competitive constituency, with three outgoing TDs James Browne (FF), Verona Murphy (Ind) and Johnny Mythen (SF) all standing. Labour’s Brendan Howlin is retiring, as is former Fine Gael minister Paul Kehoe.
Labour and Fine Gael will hope to retain their seats through Cllr George Lawlor and one of the two Fine Gael candidates, Cllr Bridín Murphy and Cllr Cathal Byrne.
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Wexford has gone from a five-seater to a four-seater constituency, with 50,000 voters in the county now going to the newly created Wicklow-Wexford constituency
Mr Wallace topped the poll in the 2011 general election and was re-elected in 2016, finishing third in the old Wexford constituency. He was elected to the European Parliament in 2019 but lost his seat this year.
He told presenter Alan Corcoran that he made his decision following consultation with his surviving children. His son Joe died earlier this year from cancer.
He said he would put his name forward because he had been one of the few people in Dáil Éireann who knew anything about housing. He had warned that the costs of the children’s hospital would rise well beyond €1 billion, but was ignored, he added.
“I come from the industry. They [the Government] have moved away from the idea of providing public housing through the local authorities,” he said. “The Land Development Agency is another scam. If the local authorities are not fit to be the conduit to provide public housing in Ireland, let’s make them so.”
Mr Wallace reiterated that he would not do “parish-pump politics”. Neither would he serve in Government if elected.
“Opposition is incredibly important and I don’t see much of it. I see most members of the Dáil become part of the mainstream,” he said. “I would have been demonised in the Dáil for the police and stuff. I probably challenged the Nama stuff single-handedly. I made it plain that the whole children’s hospital thing was a scam when it should have cost less than a billion.”
He was very emotional when speaking about Joe, who was aged 30 when he died suddenly from a brain tumour.
“I’m not the first person to lose a son. Only those who have that experience understand what it is like,” he said.
“We have to get on with life as best we can. You don’t get over it. You have to come to terms with it every day, but you have got to keep going. It’s not easy.”
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