Clare Daly elected as MEP

Independents 4 Change TD Clare Daly has secured the third seat for Dublin in the European Parliament.

Daly follows Green Party's Ciarán Cuffe and Frances Fitzgerald of Fine Gael, who were elected last night.

Clare Daly battled it out with Fianna Fáil's Barry Andrews for the third seat, with Andrews securing what will be a fourth seat in parliament for Dublin, once Britain leaves the European Union.

In an interview with Hot Press's Clare Daly spoke to Stuart Clarke about her reasons for running for Europe, where she join her sometimes political ally, Luke 'Ming' Flanagan. "Dáil business has been utterly dominated by issues that in some way have a connection with the European Union," she explained, "be it either Brexit or other matters which arise directly from the EU or where the EU is used as an excuse for things not being done".

Later on in the interview, Daly voiced her opinion on climate change and the carbon tax:

"We need a progressive policy where carbon is targeted at source rather than some old lady being asked to pay double for a bag of coal. It also needs to be done in tandem with a proper State programme of retrofitting people’s houses to make them efficient in terms of solar or thermal energy. The debate needs to be moved on from 'this is a battle to make sacrifices, to give up things' to a positive engagement about how we save the planet."

Clare Daly also strongly contests the formation of an EU Army.

"It’s gathering pace very, very quickly now," she insisted. "Ironically, the departure of the Brits will accelerate the situation because they’ve been a bit of a stumbling block to that. Not out of any peaceful desire but out of a love of NATO and their American friends. Last week, the EU signed off on €13 billion for 'defence research and development'. On top of that, they’re haemorrhaging funds from other budgets into military projects. This will allow troops common headquarters within the European Defence Agency, which Ireland sits at.

"We’re spending €200 million on a multi-role vessel, which is capable of carrying battalions of troops and landing craft and all of that. What do we need it for? Are we going to invade the Aran Islands? At the same time, our own soldiers and defence force personnel are being pauperised. It’s obvious where Ireland is heading."

In relation to the EU's foreign policy, Clare Daly is against interventionism.

"The reason that the world is unsafe is because the West is facilitating or actively engaging with going into other countries and bombing people and taking families out of their homes. To expect that there isn’t going to be some kind of blowback from that is absolutely ludicrous. Were you taken aback when a former female member of the Defence Forces was detained over alleged ISIS membership? No, we’ve been aware that quite a number of Irish people aligned themselves to ISIS.

"The West fully fuelled and armed the jihad in Syria, so we can’t go blaming citizens when they went along to fight the good fight – even though we now say, 'It’s absolutely reprehensible'. The same western governments who armed the jihadis are now saying to their citizens that went along, 'Oh, no, you can’t come back here'. The West created this monster out of the Iraq War, which record numbers of Irish people tried to stop happening. The blowback was ISIS, and those supporting them."

You can read Stuart's full interview with MEP Daly here.