Proinsias De Rossa

Proinsias De Rossa ( born May 15, 1940 in Dublin) is an Irish politician and was last 1999-2012 Member of the European Parliament. He belongs to the Group of the Party of European Socialists.

De Rossa was elected in February 1982 for the Sinn Féin the Workers Party in the 23rd Dáil Éireann. A short time later, the party was renamed the Workers' Party. De Rossa was re-elected five times and belonged to the Dáil Éireann until 2002.

After it in 1992 to disputes within the party of party members who also the Official IRA who were members came, which was a permanent burden on the party tried the party leadership, especially De Rossa, who was chairman of the party since 1988, the statutes of the party to change to the extent that alleged members of the OIRA could be excluded from the party. The structures of the party should be reformed. Now when this attempt failed because no two-thirds majority was reached, were many leaders from, including six of the seven members of the party in Dáil Éireann, among them De Rossa from the Workers' Party and founded the Democratic Left. De Rossa was elected the first chairman of the new party and was from the 27th Dáil Éireann one of the deputies of the Democratic Left in Parliament. After 1994, the coalition of Fianna Fáil and Irish Labour Party broke up, there was a new government coalition of Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Democratic Left. De Rossa was in this government of 15 December 1994 to 26 June 1997 Minister of Social Affairs. Poor election results in the 1997 Dáil elections meant that the party in 1999 merged with the Labour Party. Ruairi Quinn kept his post as chairman of the party and De Rossa was symbolically party president, a position he held until 2002.

In 1999, De Rossa was elected for the Labour Party in the European Parliament and heard him ever since. Already from 1989 to 1992, he worked for the Workers ' Party, and then also been briefly for the Democratic Left, Member of the European Parliament. However, De Rossa laid down his mandate in 1992 and Des Geraghty, general secretary of the Democratic Left moved for him. From 1999 to 2004 he was Deputy Chairman of the Party of European Socialists. De Rossa was also a member of the Constitutional Convention (2002-2003 ).

In February 2012, he resigned his seat in the European Parliament. The Dublin City Councillor Emer Costello moved for him.