Researcher Sadhbh O’Neill has announced that she will contest the upcoming Seanad bye election.
The former councillor is standing as an independent candidate and her campaign will focus on climate action.
The last day for receiving nominations at the election will be February 11th. Ballot papers will be issued on February 25th and the poll will close at 11am on March 30th.
In a press statement, O’Neill said: “Our economic structures and our politics are driving inequality, suffering and a dangerously heating planet. But there are solutions; and they’ve been around for decades.”
“To tackle these multiple crises we need a new politics – regenerative politics, that serves people and the environment that supports us. Regenerative politics does not pit progress against nature. It puts justice and fairness at the heart of politics. No-one is left behind, and there are no ‘sacrifice zones.’”
“As a spokesperson for environmental and climate action for over three decades I want to take this work into a political forum. This is why I’m running as a candidate in the Trinity Seanad By-election, so I can bring these ideas to the site of power in Ireland, and hold the government and all political parties and institutions to account”, she added.
O’Neill served as a Green Party Dublin City councillor for five years from 1991. She is currently studying for a PhD at the University College Dublin School of Politics and International Relations, where she researches ethics and carbon trading. She is also a researcher and lecturer in climate policy in Dublin City University.
The bye election is likely to be held this spring. Other candidates include former Ireland rugby international Hugo MacNeill, Graduate Students’ Union President Gisèle Scanlon and social worker and Labour representative Eoin Barry. They will run alongside former diplomat and political commentator Ray Bassett, disability campaigner Tom Clonan and barrister Ade Oluborode.
Clonan has run for the Seanad elections twice – in 2016 and 2020 – but never managed to secure a seat. MacNeill ran unsuccessfully in 2020.
Two Trinity PhD candidates, Ryan Alberto Ó Giobúin and Ursula Quill, will also be on the ballot.
Ó Giobúin is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology. His research concerns inequalities in education.
Quill is a PhD candidate in the School of Law, focusing on the Citizens Assembly and deliberative democracy. She was a secretarial assistant to Ivana Bacik for four years while Bacik was a senator.
Fine Gael has confirmed the party will not have run a candidate, but is expected to support MacNeill’s campaign.
