seamus dubhghaill

Promoting Irish Culture and History from Little Rock, Arkansas, USA

Tag Archives: Climate Change Mitigation


by Leave a comment

Birth of Ciarán Cuffe, Politician & European Parliament Member

Ciarán Cuffe, Irish politician who has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from Ireland for the Dublin constituency since July 2019, is born in Shankill, Dublin, on April 3, 1963. He is a member of the Green Party, part of the European Green Party. He previously serves as a Minister of State from 2010 to 2011. He is a Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dún Laoghaire constituency from 2002 to 2011.

Cuffe is the son of Luan Peter Cuffe and Patricia Sistine Skakel. His father, who trains at Harvard University under Walter Gropius, is an architect who was involved in town planning for Dún Laoghaire and Wicklow before taking over his brother-in-law’s architectural practice. Through his mother, he is a grandson of George Skakel, a founder of Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, and a nephew of Ethel Skakel Kennedy. His cousins include the children of Ethel and Robert F. Kennedy. His granduncle was the Fianna Fáil TD Patrick Little, and his great-grandfather, Philip Francis Little, was the first Premier of Newfoundland in 1854. He is a member of the Dublin Cycling Campaign and has cycled coast-to-coast across the United States.

Cuffe attends the Children’s House Montessori School in Stillorgan, Gonzaga College in Ranelagh, the University of Maine at Orono, University College Dublin (UCD), and the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has degrees in architecture and urban planning from UCD. He teaches a master’s programme in urban regeneration and development at the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Bolton Street. In 2019, he completes a Master of Science in cities at the London School of Economics (LSE).

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.

Cuffe is an unsuccessful candidate for the Dublin Central constituency at the 1997 Irish general election but is elected to the Dáil Éireann at the 2002 Irish general election for the Dún Laoghaire constituency.

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.

On March 23, 2010, as part of a reshuffle, Cuffe is appointed as Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, at the Department of Transport and at the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, with special responsibility for Horticulture, Sustainable Travel, and Planning and Heritage.

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 a member of the European Parliament Committee on Transport and Tourism (TRAN) and is the Coordinator of the Greens-European Free Alliance (Greens/EFA). He is also a member of the European Parliament Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE), and has written an initiative report, The Cuffe Report, on maximising the Energy Efficiency of the EU building stock (2020/2070). In 2022, he is appointed rapporteur on the directive on the Energy Performance of Buildings (EPBD).

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.

In June 2023, Cuffe is the recipient of the Energy, Science and Research Award at The Parliament Magazine‘s annual MEP Awards.


by Leave a comment

Birth of Naomi Long, Northern Irish Politician

Naomi Rachel Long MLA (née Johnston), a Northern Irish politician who serves as Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive from January 2020 to October 2022, is born in east Belfast, Northern Ireland, on December 13, 1971. She has served as leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland (APNI) since 2016 and a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East since 2020.

Long attends Mersey Street Primary and Bloomfield Collegiate School. She graduates from Queen’s University Belfast with a degree in civil engineering in 1994, works in a structural engineering consultancy for two years, holds a research and training post at Queen’s University for three years, and then goes back into environmental and hydraulic engineering consultancy for four years.

Long first takes political office in 2001 when she is elected to Belfast City Council for the Victoria ward. In 2003, she is elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly for Belfast East, succeeding her fellow party member John Alderdice. In 2006, she is named deputy leader of her party. In the 2007 Northern Ireland Assembly election, she more than doubles the party’s vote in the constituency, being placed second ahead of the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The overall UUP vote, however, is 22%. At 18.8%, her vote share is higher than that for Alderdice in 1998.

On June 1, 2009, Long is elected as Lord Mayor of Belfast, defeating Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) candidate William Humphrey by 26 votes to 24 in a vote at a council meeting. She becomes the second woman to hold the post, after Grace Bannister (1981–82).

On May 6, 2010, Long defeats Peter Robinson, First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP, to become Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast East in the House of Commons. She becomes the first MP elected to Westminster for the Alliance Party (previously, Stratton Mills, a former Ulster Unionist Party MP, had changed parties to Alliance). She also becomes the first Liberal-affiliated MP elected to Westminster in Northern Ireland since James Brown Dougherty in Londonderry City in 1914. Despite the close relationship between the Alliance Party and the Liberal Democrats, she does not sit with the coalition government nor take the coalition whip and is not a member of the Liberal Democrats.

On December 10, 2012, Long receives a number of death threats, and a petrol bomb is thrown inside an unmarked police car guarding her constituency office. This violence erupts as a reaction by Ulster loyalists to the decision by Alliance Party members of Belfast City Council to vote in favour of restricting the flying of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall to designated days throughout the year, which at the time constitutes 18 specific days.

In 2015, Long loses her seat in the Commons to Gavin Robinson of the DUP, as a result of a five-party unionist pact in the constituency which sees the UUP, UK Independence Party (UKIP), Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and Progressive Unionist Party (PUP) all stand aside in favour of Robinson.

In January 2016, Long announces that she will return as an Assembly candidate in the 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election having been nominated in place of incumbent Judith Cochrane. She is subsequently elected on the first count with 14.7% of first-preference votes. Following her return to the Assembly, she assumes positions on the Committee for Communities, the All-Party Group on Fairtrade, the All-Party Group for Housing, and chairs the All-Party Group on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.

In August 2016, Long calls for Sinn Féin‘s Máirtín Ó Muilleoir to stand aside as Minister of Finance during an investigation of the Stormont Finance Committee’s handling of its Nama inquiry, while Ó Muilleoir is a committee member. This follows allegations that his party had “coached” loyalist blogger Jamie Bryson prior to his appearance before the committee.

In November 2016, Long criticises Sinn Féin and the DUP for delaying the publication of a working group report on abortion, which recommends legislative changes in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, calling on the Executive “to act without further delay to help women who decide to seek a termination in these very difficult circumstances.”

On October 26, 2016, Long is elected Alliance leader unopposed following the resignation of David Ford. In the first manifesto released under her leadership, she affirms her commitment to building a “united, open, liberal and progressive” society. Her party’s legislative priorities are revealed to include the harmonisation and strengthening of equality and anti-discrimination measures, the introduction of civil marriage equality, development of integrated education and a Northern Ireland framework to tackle climate change.

In the 2017 Northern Ireland Assembly election, Long tops the poll in Belfast East and is returned to the Assembly with 18.9% of first-preference votes. The election is widely viewed as a success for Alliance, with the party increasing its vote share by 2 percentage points and retaining all of its seats in a smaller Assembly. The party subsequently holds the balance of power at Stormont.

Alliance targets two seats in Belfast South and Belfast East in the 2017 United Kingdom general election. During the campaign, Long reaffirms her support for a People’s Vote, marriage equality, Votes at 16 and greater transparency surrounding political donations. She also pledges to oppose any rollback of the Human Rights Act 1998.

Following the collapse of talks to restore devolution in February 2018, Long reiterates her view that the pay of MLAs should be cut in the absence of a functioning Executive. In March 2018, Alliance launches its “Next Steps Forward” paper, outlining a number of proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock and Stormont. At the 2019 Alliance Party Conference, she accuses Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley of an “appalling dereliction of duty” over the ongoing stalemate, saying that she had made “no concerted effort to end this interminable drift despite it allegedly being her top priority.”

In the 2019 Northern Ireland local elections, Alliance sees a 65% rise in its representation on councils. Long hails the “incredible result” as a watershed moment for politics in Northern Ireland.

Long is elected to the European Parliament as a representative for Northern Ireland in May 2019 with 18.5% of first-preference votes, the best ever result for Alliance. She is subsequently replaced in the Assembly by Máire Hendron, a founding member of the party and former deputy lord mayor of Belfast. She then replaces Hendron in the Assembly with effect from January 9, 2020.

In 2019, Long becomes the first Northern Ireland politician to have served at every level of government.

On January 11, 2020, following the restoration of the Northern Ireland Assembly after three years of stalemate, Long is elected Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Executive. On January 28, she announces that she will progress new domestic abuse legislation through the Assembly which will make coercive control a criminal offence in Northern Ireland. In June 2020, she commissions a review into the support available for prison officers following concerns about absence rates. That same month, she announces her intention to introduce unexplained wealth orders in Northern Ireland to target paramilitary and criminal finances.

In November 2020, Long says she is seriously reconsidering her position within the Executive following the DUP’s deployment of a cross-community vote to prevent an extension of COVID-19 regulations. She tells BBC News, “I have asked people to desist from this abuse of power because it will make my position in the executive unsustainable.”

In March 2022, Long tells the Alliance Party Conference that “some politicians are addicted to crisis and conflict and simply not up to the job of actually governing.” Long leads Alliance into the 2022 Northern Ireland Assembly election on a platform of integrated education, health reform, a Green New Deal, tackling paramilitarism and reform of the Stormont institutions.

Long is a member of Bloomfield Presbyterian Church. Following the Church’s decision to exclude those in same-sex relationships from being full members, she expresses “great concern” and states that she “didn’t know” if she would remain a member herself. She is married to Michael Long, an Alliance councillor on Belfast City Council and former Lord Mayor of Belfast, and son of the engineer Professor Adrian Long. Long and her husband are the first husband and wife to have both served as Lord Mayors of Belfast.