Joe Higgins

Joe Higgins ( born May 1, 1949 in Lispole, County Kerry) is an Irish politician of the Socialist Party and since 2011 a member of Dáil Éireann. Previously, he was already 1997-2007 Member of Dáil Éireann and 2009-2011 Member of the European Parliament.

Childhood and education

Joe Higgins was born in 1949 as one of nine children of a small peasant family in Lispole, County Kerry. After his education, he aspired to the career of the priest. As part of his training he was sent to the 60's in the U.S. to visit a seminary in Minnesota. There he became politicized in the context of protests against the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. Later he became an atheist and said of his time in the seminary: " What choice you had in Ireland, especially in my time where you already got inoculated the Catholic faith from baptism Later you can think critically? ".

Political activity

He returned to Ireland in Dublin and studied English and French. For some years he worked as a teacher at various schools in dublin city center. At the University he joined the Irish Labour Party and became active in the Militant Tendency, a Trotskyist group operated the entrism in the Labour Party. During his time in the Labour Party, he always entered against government investments. In the 1980s he was elected to the party executive. 1989 Higgins was expelled along with other members of Militant from the Labour Party. The group left the party and founded Militant Labour, from the 1996 forerunner of the Socialist Party.

Higgins promised to take only an average skilled workers wage, less than half of his parliamentary salary and donate the rest to the party and progressive campaigns. He was elected to Parliament so far the only Trotskyist 1997, 2002, he succeeded in re-election. In 2007 he came to again, but narrowly lost his seat in 2003, he spent a month in jail after he had protested against the introduction of fees for refuse collection. Even in a campaign against the deportation of a Nigerian student Higgins played a significant role.

He used the Parliament as a platform to draw attention to the exploitation of migrant workers in Ireland. Higgins and others stated that many companies migrants would pay less than the minimum wage and not pay overtime in some cases. In March 2005, traveled Higgins and a delegation of Turkish former employees of GAMA Endustri, a Turkish construction company operating in Ireland, to Amsterdam, where they found out that GAMA had betrayed the workers to wage payments in an amount of up to EUR 30 million.

Higgins was widely regarded as the wittiest speaker in Parliament, as one of the few opposition leaders of ability was attributed to criticize the Prime Minister Bertie Ahern successfully.

In 2007, he lost his parliamentary seat, contrary to the polls. Although the Socialist Party had been in other constituencies like many votes as in 2002, she lost in Dublin West 20%. Higgins suspected as the cause of that constituency boundaries have not been corrected despite an increase in population.

In the European elections in Ireland 2009, he won one of three seats in the European Parliament for the constituency of Dublin. He was here a member of the GUE / NGL group and belonged to the Committee on International Trade.

On 24 February 2011 he gave up his seat in the European Parliament, after he was re-elected to the Irish Parliament elected to the Dáil Éireann.