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Labour Announce O’Keefe for North-West
Read more about: Europe, European Parliament, Irish Election, Labour Party 
The Labour Party start their conference weekend off with the announcement that they will be running a candidate in the North-West constituency for the forthcoming European Parliament Elections.
Susan O’Keefe is a journalist who broke the story on a World in Action programme on the Irish Beef Industry which led to the formation of a Tribunal of Inquiry.
O’Keefe ended up being one of the only people charged after the Tribunal for contempt for refusing to reveal her sources. This despite the Tribunal finding that many of the allegations made in the programmes were substantiated. The case against her collapsed and she has won several awards for her work including a Campaign for Freedom of Information award.
The North-West Constituency will also feature the candidacy of Lbertas Chairman, Declan Ganley.
Labour’s candidate in the 3 seater constituency in 2004, Hughie Baxter, came second last with 13,948 votes. Given the current polictal climate its safe to say that the party would wish to improve on this.
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is she popular with the farmers?
this is a great coup for them – a candidate who wil naturally get media attention, dont we all love talking about our own and one with a track record on exposing corruption.
It is certainly a potential win – this is becoming another consituency where plenty of blood will be left on the floor after the count. Can’t wait!
I saw the report on the times about this. No mention of MacLochlainn there either. Strange how the candidate of the party that was pipped at the post last time ans is generally expected to return a seat in both Donegals is left out.
However it will be to SF’s benefit to have two sweeper candidates in the form of Declan Ganley and Susan.
Neither of those candidates, despite the efforts of the media to highlight them, will in my opinion be able to muster the same level of first preference votes
If MacLochlainn can then hold on beyond them both he will reap transfers which is where Pearse fell the lsat time.
O’Keeffe is an interesting choice. I don’t think she’ll get in but the campaign will raise hr profile for the next election. I wonder where she is based ? In Galway, there is a chance that Michael D Higgins won’t run in the next general election but there isn’t high profile candidate to succeed him – I wonder if Susan is being lined for same ?
AS for Declan Ganley, I think the previous commentor got it right – Sinn Fein’s Pearse Doherty will probably benefit from the Lisbon No voters more than Ganley [and I think there will be far less No voted in the West the next time around]
She’s Sligo based and its great news that we are going to run a candidate!
How could one vote for a candidate, Susan O’Keefe, who made a complete fool of herself on the Vincent Brown programme on Wednesday 27-05-09. She was shown up as an oportunist and an ill-informed one at that. God help us all.