Pat the Cope Gallagher

Pat Gallagher ( Irish: Pádraig Ó Gallchóir; born March 10, 1948 in Dungloe ) is an Irish politician of the Fianna Fáil (FF) and Member of the European Parliament. His nickname The Cope, which is also indicated on the official websites of the party and of the European Parliament, referring to the Irish consumer cooperative of the same name, which had been founded by Gallagher's grandfather.

Curriculum vitae

After a trade studies at the National University of Ireland, Galway, which he finished in 1970, Gallagher worked until 1982 as a fish exporter. Since 1979, he worked with local politics, in 1981 he was first elected to the FF in the Dáil Éireann, the Irish House of Commons, where he remained until 1997. From 1987 to 1994 he was Minister of State (roughly equivalent to the rank of Secretary of State ) on maritime issues and the Gaeltacht regions.

In the European elections in 1994, he was elected to the European Parliament, where he served until 2002. He was also a member of the Committee on Fisheries, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy

In 2002 he gave up his seat in the European Parliament, to return to enter a seat in Dáil Éireann, besides, he was appointed Minister of State in the Ministry of Environment. From 2004 he was again in charge as Minister of State for Maritime Affairs, from 2006 he was Minister of State in the transport, from 2007, the Ministry of Health, where he was responsible for health care and food safety. After Brian Cowen new Irish Prime Minister had been in May 2008, Gallagher lost his position as Minister of State.

Instead, he joined the European elections in Ireland again in 2009 and was re-elected to the European Parliament. Here he replaced Brian Crowley as head of the Fianna Fáil delegation after he publicly criticized the party's decision, the European liberal party ELDR join and to switch from the national-conservative UEN Group in the liberal ALDE group.

In the election period 2009-14 is Gallagher Chairman of the Delegation for relations with Switzerland and Norway and to the Joint Parliamentary Committee EU-Iceland Joint Parliamentary Committee European Economic Area, as well as a member of the Committee on Fisheries and the Conference of Delegation Chairs. As Deputy Gallagher is in the Committee on Regional Development.

Family

Gallagher is married since 1989 with Ann Gillespie, who was sentenced along with her sister Eibhlin 1974 for conspiracy and violations of the Explosives Act to fifteen years in prison and was serving them for about ten years. Background was the visit of the two sisters in a house in Manchester, in the exploded a homemade bomb. Gillespie said always that she was innocent. Since the conviction to important parts based on studies of expert Frank Skuse, whose erroneous opinions in other known cases - such as in the case of the Birmingham Six - had contributed to the conviction of the innocent and who was therefore put into early retirement in 1985, told the British Ministry of the Interior in 2005, according to Gillespie that it would have no objection to a retrial. Gillespie refused but.