Adebari arrives in Dublin with his wife and two children in 2000. After he converts from Islam to Christianity, he flees Nigeria in 2000, and makes a claim for asylum on the grounds of religious persecution. His application is rejected because of a lack of evidence that he had personally suffered persecution. He does however gain automatic residency when his wife gives birth to a son in Ireland shortly after their arrival.
Adebari and his family settle in County Laois. He completes his master’s degree in intercultural studies at Dublin City University (DCU) and sets up a firm called Optimum Point Consultancy.
In 2004, Adebari is elected as a town councilor in local elections. On June 27, 2007, at the age of 43, he is elected mayor of the 9-member Portlaoise Town Council, by a vote of six to three and with support from Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and an Independent councilor. At a meeting attended by officials from the Nigerian, South African, and the United States embassies, the new mayor is quoted as saying his election is proof that “Ireland is not just a country of a thousand welcomes, but it is a country of equal opportunity.” In the 2009 local elections he is re-elected to the town council and also to Laois County Council for the Portlaoise electoral area.
In 2007, Adebari denies claims that he was a train operator in London who worked out of the Queen’s Park station on the Bakerloo line. Multiple London Underground employees, including Paddy Clarke, a retired tube driver from County Louth, state that Adebari worked as a train driver in London during the late 1990s before moving to Ireland. Clarke states, “at the very least fifty drivers and six or more managers will remember him. His photograph and signature are on file with London Underground’s personnel office which were used in the issue of his free travel-pass and identity card.” Adebari asserts he traveled to Ireland directly from Nigeria via Paris, and never worked or lived in London at any time.
Cuffe joins the Green Party in 1982, and campaigns with Students Against the Destruction of Dublin (SADD) in the 1980s. He is twice elected to Dublin City Council, in 1991 and 1999, for the South Inner City electoral area. In 1996, he launches a free bikes scheme in which bicycles are placed around Dublin city centre for use by the public.
In June 2003, Cuffe steps down as the Green Party’s environment spokesperson after it is revealed that he held shares worth $70,000 in a number of oil exploration companies which he had inherited when his late mother had left him $1.3 million in her will. He is re-elected at the 2007 Irish general election.
Following the 2007 election, the Green Party forms a coalition government with two other political parties and a number of independent TDs. Just after the election, on May 28, 2007, Cuffe writes in his blog: “A deal with Fianna Fáil would be a deal with the Devil. We would be spat out after 5 years and decimated as a party.” He loses his seat at the 2011 Irish general election.
While Cuffe is minister, the Oireachtas enacts the Planning and Development (Amendment) Act 2010 to address land-use planning failures and over-zoning of development land. The legislation reforms the way development plans and local area plans are made and, for the first time in Irish legislation, includes a definition of Anthropogenic Climate Change and required energy use to be taken into account in planning decisions. He publishes the Climate Change Response Bill 2010, and an update of the National Spatial Strategy. He is head of the Irish delegation at the 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico.
Cuffe promotes healthy eating for children, school gardens and local markets. He publishes bills to address climate change, noise pollution, and heritage protection. In January 2011, he launches a new policy of allowing bicycles on off-peak Dublin Area Rapid Transit (DART) trains.
Cuffe resigns as Minister of State on January 23, 2011, when the Green Party withdraws from government.
At the 2014 Irish local elections, Cuffe is elected to Dublin City Council for Dublin North Inner City area, on the 13th count. He is appointed chairperson for the Dublin City Council Transportation Committee in 2014. As a member of the Central Area Committee for Dublin City Council, he works to provide a site for the Gaelscoil Choláiste Mhuire primary school on Dominick Street in 2017. He introduces 30 km/h speed limits to residential and school areas of Dublin and also advocates for a car-free College Green. He calls for an increase in affordable housing in Dublin, specifically for people with different incomes. Speaking on the Strategic Development Zone in the Dublin Docklands, he states, “We have seen a lot of cranes in the Docklands but not a lot of homes. Particularly affordable homes.” He proposes a Motion declaring a Climate Emergency which is approved at a meeting of the Council on May 13, 2019.
Cuffe is selected as the Green Party candidate for the Dublin constituency at the 2019 European Parliament elections. He tops the poll, receiving 63,849 votes and is elected as an MEP on the 13th count, with 17.54% first preference votes. He is also re-elected to Dublin City Council, but due to the prohibition on a dual mandate, this seat is co-opted to fellow Green Party member Janet Horner.
Cuffe is President of the European Forum for Renewable Energy Sources (EUFORES), a cross-party European parliamentary network gathering members of European, regional and national parliaments of the EU, and works to promote renewable energy and energy efficiency.
A notable aspect of McGahon’s political career is his stand against the Provisional IRA when that organisation’s campaign of violence is at its height. At great personal risk, he refuses to close his newsagents shop in Dundalk during the funerals of the hunger strikers in 1981. He takes another huge risk a few years later when he gives evidence in the High Court in support of The Sunday Times, which is being sued for libel by Thomas Murphy for accusing him of directing an IRA bombing campaign in Britain. Local Gardaí are ordered not to get involved in the case, but McGahon is not deterred from giving evidence that helps the newspaper to defend the claims being made against it by Murphy.
A maverick and outspoken TD, McGahon is known to speak his mind on many issues including divorce, crime, and single mothers. He once advocates that pedophiles should be castrated as part of their prison sentence and is the only TD to oppose the referendum to abolish the death penalty from the Constitution. He also argues that those under 21 years of age should not be able to drive or drink. He is a member of the World Anti-Communist League and opposes the decriminalisation of homosexuality. In 1993, he is the only TD to oppose the decriminalisation of homosexuality and says in the Dáil that:
“I regard homosexuals as being in a sad category, but I believe homosexuality to be an abnormality, some type of psycho-sexual problem that has defied explanation over the years. I do not believe that the Irish people desire this normalisation of what is clearly an abnormality. Homosexuality is a departure from normality and while homosexuals deserve our compassion, they do not deserve our tolerance. That is how the man in the street thinks. I know of no homosexual who has been discriminated against. Such people have a persecution complex because they know they are different from the masses or normal society. They endure inner torment, and it is not a question of the way others view them. The lord provided us with sexual organs for a specific purpose. Homosexuals are like left-hand drivers driving on the right-hand side of the road.”
On the other hand, McGahon speaks out strongly against the influence of the drink industry and defies his own party whip to vote with his left-wing friend Tony Gregory in favour of banning of hare coursing. He is also on good personal terms with members of the Oireachtas such as Michael D. Higgins and David Norris despite holding fundamentally opposed views to them.
McGahon does not contest the 2002 Irish general election and retires from politics.
McGahon lives in Ravensdale, County Louth. His son Conor is a Louth County Councillor from 1991 to 1999 and his brother Johnny is a Louth County Councillor from 1995 to 2004. Johnny’s nephew, John McGahon, is elected to Louth County Council at the 2014 Irish local elections and to Seanad Éireann in 2020.
McGahon dies at the age of 80 on February 8, 2017, following a short illness. Following a Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral on February 11, he is buried afterwards in St. Patrick’s Cemetery.
seamus dubhghaill 