Clare Daly
Clare Daly is an Irish politician who was a Member of the European Parliament from Ireland for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024. She is a member of Independents 4 Change, affiliated to The Left in the European Parliament.
In the 1980s, Daly was a member of the Labour Party as a teenager, but was later expelled alongside other members after they were accused of being Trotskyists infiltrating the party using the tactic of entryism. She went on to be a founding member of "Militant Labour", later renamed the Socialist Party. In 1999 she was elected to Fingal County Council, a position she held for 12 years. Daly was elected as a Socialist Party TD for the Dublin North constituency at the 2011 general election.
Since 2012, Daly has had a close political association with Mick Wallace. After the Socialist Party condemned Wallace for tax evasion, Daly left the party in August 2012 and formed United Left.
After becoming an MEP, Daly gained international attention for her foreign policy positions, particularly on Russia. Describing herself as an opponent of "EU militarism", her views have been the subject of controversy and criticism in Europe, but have been promoted by state-controlled media in Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and other authoritarian states. Daly lost her seat in the 2024 European Parliament election. She was a candidate in Dublin Central in the 2024 general election but was eliminated on the 4th count.
Life and career
Early years and education
Daly is from Newbridge, County Kildare. Her father, Kevin Daly, was a colonel in the Irish Army, where he was Director of Signals. She is an atheist, while her brother and an uncle are Catholic priests. Daly studied accountancy at Dublin City University. She was twice elected president of the Students' Union, serving from 1988 to 1990, and was active in the students' movement as a campaigner for abortion rights and information. On leaving college she took a job in the catering section of Aer Lingus on a low wage, and became SIPTU's shop steward at Dublin Airport.Early political career
Daly initially joined the Labour Party, where she was elected to the party's Administrative Committee as a youth representative. A member of Labour's Militant Tendency, she was expelled from the party in 1989 alongside Joe Higgins and other supporters of the faction after they were accused of being Trotskyists infiltrating the party using the tactic of entryism. At first calling themselves Militant Labour, in 1996 they formed the Socialist Party.County councillor (1999 to 2011)
Daly was elected for the Swords area at the 1999 Fingal County Council election. She was re-elected at the 2004 local elections and the 2009 local elections, topping the poll on both occasions.In 2003, Daly was jailed for a month, alongside 21 others from the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign for breaching a High Court order preventing protests leading to obstruction of the council's non-collection policy for those not paying bin charges. in 2011, she announced that she would not register to pay a new household charge brought in as part of the latest austerity budget, calling it "reprehensible", and telling Phil Hogan, the minister responsible, in the Dáil: "You can't bring everyone to court". She was an organiser of the Anti-Water charges campaign in Swords in 2014.
She first ran for a seat in Dáil Éireann at the 1997 general election, receiving 7.2% on that occasion and 8.2% at the 1998 Dublin North by-election. At the 2002 general election she received 5,501 votes, narrowly missing a seat. At the 2007 general election she received 9% of the vote.
Teachta Dála (2011 to 2019)
She was eventually elected to Dáil Éireann at the 2011 general election, taking 15.2% of the first preference vote. During the presidential election campaign later that year, Daly and Joe Higgins supported the nomination of independent candidate David Norris in his search for the 20 Oireachtas members necessary for inclusion on the ballot paper.In February 2012, it was reported that she would introduce a bill to provide for limited access to abortion where there is "real and substantial risk to the life" of the pregnant woman, in line with the X Case. The bill was defeated before its second reading on 19 April 2012.
In 2012, Daly, Higgins and Joan Collins used travel expenses to cover expenses related to their attendance at anti-household charge meetings around the country. Daly described the dispute over this as a "smear campaign", saying that legal advice was being sought as there was a lack of clarity around the issue and that she would refund any money that was used inappropriately.
In June of that same year, Daly refused to call for the resignation of her friend and political ally Mick Wallace in the wake of his VAT controversy. It was reported by the Evening Herald that the United Left Alliance, of which the Socialist Party was part, were to confront her over this stance. Daly resigned from the Socialist Party on 31 August 2012. In a statement, the Socialist Party said "it believed Ms Daly had resigned because she placed more value on her political connection with Independent TD Mick Wallace than on the political positions and work of the Socialist Party." Daly described the claim as "absolute nonsense" and said that she had not called for Wallace's resignation because the Socialist Party had not called for his resignation. She requested a share of the €120,000 Socialist Party's Leaders Allowance to allow her to continue to fund her activities as an Independent TD.
In April 2013, along with another TD, Joan Collins, she founded a new political party called United Left.
Following the 39th G8 summit, Daly accused the Fine Gael–Labour government of "prostituting" the country to US President Barack Obama and criticised what she described as media and political "slobbering" over his wife Michelle and their children during their stay in Ireland. She also called Obama a hypocrite and a war criminal for speaking about peace whilst using drones to bomb foreign civilians and wanting to supply weapons to Syrian rebels. Taoiseach Enda Kenny responded to her comments, saying they were "disgraceful" and "beneath you" since President Obama had supported peace in Northern Ireland.
In January 2013, Daly was arrested after taking an illegal turn while driving, under suspicion of drink driving. Daly admitted to having consumed a hot whiskey, but a urine test found that she was below the legal alcohol limit for driving. In 2016, an investigation by the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission found that details of Daly's arrest had been leaked in an unauthorised manner, and that Daly's right to privacy had been breached.
In the aftermath of the November 2015 Paris attacks, Daly criticised Simon Coveney's willingness to send Irish troops to Mali to allow French troops to concentrate on domestic security, stating the Government had "an incredibly fluid interpretation of what it means to be a neutral country". Daly said "Reference has been made to France being better placed and France having a right to defend its citizens. Precisely contradictory remarks were made when Russia engaged in the same reprehensible actions by bombing Syria in response to attacks on Russia. The West said Russia should not be doing that because it was endangering its citizens. That was correct for Russia but it is also correct for France". Coveney accused Daly of attempting to shift blame for the attacks from the perpetrators and onto France itself and other European countries. Coveney said: "The suggestion in this House that we should be looking at ourselves to blame for what happened on the streets of Paris is reprehensible. France has an obligation to defend itself".
In December 2015, Daly along with independent TDs Mick Wallace and Maureen O'Sullivan each put forward offers of a €5,000 surety for a 23-year-old man being prosecuted under terrorism legislation in the Special Criminal Court in Dublin, charged with membership of the terrorist Provisional Irish Republican Army.
At the 2016 general election, she stood as an Independents 4 Change candidate in the Dublin Fingal constituency, and was elected.
In 2018 Daly, Wallace, Maureen O’Sullivan and Catherine Connolly went on a visit to Damascus, Maaloula and Aleppo in Syria. While there, Clare Daly said " feel that they are the victims primarily of Israeli, Saudi, American and Turkish interference". She said Ireland should be neutral in international affairs and not allow Shannon Airport to be used by the US military, which "has been a contributing factor to the destabilisation of Afghanistan, and Iraq, and all the refugees that have flown from that". During the trip, Daly visited areas under the control of the Assad regime, including the Yarmouk Camp in Damascus and the city of Aleppo. Daly was guided around Yarmouk by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, a group aligned with Assad and designated a terrorist organisation by the EU. In a Dáil speech following the trip, Daly stated they had a meeting with pro-Assad businessman Fares Al-Shehabi, head of Aleppo’s chamber of commerce, who was under EU sanctions at the time for his support of the Assad regime. Daly later called in the Dáil for Al-Shehabi to be granted a visa to visit Ireland, describing him as a Sunni Muslim and secular businessman who could speak on the Syrian conflict.
Member of the European Parliament (2019 to 2024)
At the 2019 European Parliament elections, she was elected for the Dublin constituency. She received 42,305 first preference votes and took the third seat. The Times, that year, described Daly as "one of the busiest Irish members in the European parliament this term".The Irish Times reported in April 2022 that, after becoming MEPs, Daly and Wallace were given high profiles in the state-controlled media of authoritarian states such as Russia, China, Iran and Syria. The report said "they are presented as important international figures who confirm regime positions". Daly had been featured in more Chinese-language news articles than any other Irish person, followed by Wallace.
In the 2024 European Parliament elections, she was endorsed by celebrities, Susan Sarandon and Annie Lennox. She lost her seat at this election, with 26,855 first preference votes. Following her defeat, Daly wrote on X: "I have been honoured to have been able to use this platform as a powerful voice for peace, antimilitarism and neutrality. This result is not a rejection of those ideas. It is a testament to the success and reach of the work we’ve done that the establishment came out in such force to harm my chance of reelection. Electoral politics is always only a platform to organise form. That organisation is going on in communities, workplaces, and universities all over Europe. We will continue to fight."
While leaving the count centre, she was caught on camera declining an interview with RTÉ, telling the reporter: "You've no interest in talking to me for five years, so I’ve no interest in talking to you."