Joe Higgins Video | Speeches and Interviews

Joe Higgins (born 20 May 1949) is an Irish Socialist Party politician. In the 2011 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann as Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency, having previously served in that capacity from 1997–2007. He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency from 2009 to 2011, the first Socialist Party MEP. One of nine children of a small farming family, he was born in 1949 in Lispole, part of the Dingle gaeltacht in County Kerry. He went to school in the Dingle Christian Brothers School, and after finishing he... MORE

Joe Higgins (born 20 May 1949) is an Irish Socialist Party politician. In the 2011 general election he was elected to Dáil Éireann as Teachta Dála (TD) for the Dublin West constituency, having previously served in that capacity from 1997–2007. He was also a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency from 2009 to 2011, the first Socialist Party MEP. One of nine children of a small farming family, he was born in 1949 in Lispole, part of the Dingle gaeltacht in County Kerry. He went to school in the Dingle Christian Brothers School, and after finishing he enrolled in the priesthood. As part of his training he was sent to a Catholic seminary school in Minnesota, U.S. in the 1960s. It was against the backdrop of anti-Vietnam War protests and the civil rights movement that Higgins was politicised. He is a brother of Liam Higgins who played football with the Kerry GAA senior team in the 1960s and 1970s. Higgins is bilingual in English and Irish, and has expressed support for a policy of multilingualism in Ireland. Higgins returned to Ireland and attended University College Dublin studying English and French. For several years he was a teacher in several Dublin LESS