Declan Ganley, the founder of Libertas and the bête noire of Europhiles in Ireland, will run for an EU Parliament seat in the North West constituency in June’s European Elections.
Mr Ganley’s candidacy had been widely expected and he made the official announcement at a meeting in the Glenlo Abbey hotel last weekend.
He acknowledged that he will “have an uphill battle to win the trust of the people” and that during the course of the election he will be “attacked, slandered, and lied about”. Nonetheless he intends to “visit every town and county in this constituency” and persuade voters that he is “on the side of the people, not the establishment in Dublin”.
Mr Ganley said the European election is taking place “in the middle of very tough times” with the economy faltering and unemployment rising.
“We have been here before, in the 1980s, and we came through it,” he said. “Generations before us have lived through bad economic times, sometimes famines, often wars, and we are still standing today.”
As a result, Mr Ganley feels the upcoming EU election is “about the future of Europe and also about the future of Ireland”.
“I am a businessman, not a politician,” he said. “I know what it takes to create wealth. I know what it will take to dig Europe out of the mess our politicians have created. We are led by a group of people who have no basic understanding of economics. It is a group of people with no new ideas.”
He accused Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, and Labour of wanting to raise taxes, leaving the public with less money to spend, leaving businesses with less income, and deepening the recession.
“This country needs a fresh start, and new blood,” he said. “Libertas, as a new party, will employ some economic common sense.”
Mr Ganley said the State should give employers a three year PRSI holiday for every new job they create, “making it cheaper to hire people and keep them in jobs”. He said commercial rates for small businesses should be cut for the next three years. He also called for the expansion and protection of education services.
“We will support spending cuts, where they are equitable, and we will oppose any Government that continues to spend money where it is not needed,” he said. “Nobody has ever given me a good reason why we need hundreds of quangos, or told me what they do. We will push for their abolition.”
Regarding Europe, Mr Ganley said that more than 70 per cent of our laws come from Brussels, “laws that suit big business and hurt you”.
“If you are a farmer, what chance has your agenda against that of the big supermarket chains who employ thousands of people to lobby unelected officials to make laws that lower the prices of your product and raise the cost to consumers at the same time?” he asked
“If you are a worker, what hope have you when Brussels allows employers to bring people into your country and pay them less than you can legally earn? If you are an employer, what hope have you when creating a job for somebody means creating a huge burden for yourself?”
Mr Ganley said a vote for Libertas is “not a vote against Brussels, it is a vote against those in Brussels who ignore you, don’t listen to you, and don’t care about you”.
Finally he called on the EU to be “straight with the European people” and to build a Europe where “the people can hold our leaders to account”.
