1. Clare Daly was born on 16 April 1968 and is an Irish politician who was a Member of the European Parliament from Ireland for the Dublin constituency from July 2019 to July 2024.
54 Facts About Clare Daly
1. 2.
Clare Daly is a member of Independents 4 Change, affiliated to The Left in the European Parliament.
3.
Clare Daly went on to be a founding member of "Militant Labour", later renamed the Socialist Party.
4.
Clare Daly was elected as a Socialist Party TD for the Dublin North constituency at the 2011 general election.
5.
Since 2012, Clare Daly has had a close political association with Mick Wallace.
6.
Clare Daly lost her seat in the 2024 European Parliament election.
7.
Clare Daly was a candidate in Dublin Central in the 2024 general election but was eliminated on the 4th count.
8.
Clare Daly's father, Kevin Daly, was a colonel in the Irish Army, where he was Director of Signals.
9.
Clare Daly is an atheist, while her brother and an uncle are Catholic priests.
10.
Clare Daly was twice elected president of the Students' Union and was active in the students' movement as a campaigner for abortion rights and information.
11.
Clare Daly initially joined the Labour Party, where she was elected to the party's Administrative Committee as a youth representative.
12.
Clare Daly was elected as a Fingal County Councillor for the Swords area in the 1999 local elections.
13.
Clare Daly was re-elected at the 2004 local elections and the 2009 local elections, topping the poll on both occasions.
14.
In 2003, Clare Daly was jailed for a month, alongside 21 others from the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign for breaching a High Court order preventing protests leading to obstruction of the council's non-collection policy for those not paying bin charges.
15.
Clare Daly was an organiser of the Anti-Water charges campaign in Swords in 2014.
16.
Clare Daly described the dispute over this as a "smear campaign", saying that legal advice was being sought as there was a lack of clarity around the issue and that she would refund any money that was used inappropriately.
17.
Clare Daly resigned from the Socialist Party on 31 August 2012.
18.
Clare Daly called Obama a hypocrite and a war criminal for speaking about peace whilst using drones to bomb foreign civilians and wanting to supply weapons to Syrian rebels.
19.
In January 2013, Clare Daly was arrested after taking an illegal turn while driving, under suspicion of drink driving.
20.
Clare Daly admitted to having consumed a hot whiskey, but a urine test found that she was below the legal alcohol limit for driving.
21.
In 2016, an investigation by the Garda Siochana Ombudsman Commission found that details of Clare Daly's arrest had been leaked in an unauthorised manner, and that Clare Daly's right to privacy had been breached.
22.
Coveney accused Clare Daly of attempting to shift blame for the attacks from the perpetrators and onto France itself and other European countries.
23.
Clare Daly said Ireland should be neutral in international affairs and not allow Shannon Airport to be used by the US military, which "has been a contributing factor to the destabilisation of Afghanistan, and Iraq, and all the refugees that have flown from that".
24.
Clare Daly received 42,305 first preference votes and took the third seat.
25.
Clare Daly had been featured in more Chinese-language news articles than any other Irish person, followed by Wallace.
26.
Clare Daly lost her seat at this election, with 26,855 first preference votes.
27.
In December 2019, The Times reported that Clare Daly had appointed her former husband, Michael Murphy, as a European Parliamentary Assistant.
28.
Clare Daly previously employed the son of fellow Independents4Change MEP Mick Wallace.
29.
In September 2020, a former parliamentary assistant of Clare Daly, who had worked for her for over seven years and was her election agent in the 2016 general election, accused her of mistreatment and of having "no respect for workers' rights".
30.
Clare Daly was interviewed on camera and praised the PMF's activities, saying it "upholds international law" unlike "the United States and many European countries".
31.
Clare Daly has consistently voted against resolutions that have been critical of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
32.
Clare Daly said that, while she has not supported Vladimir Putin, she is "an unapologetic opponent of the rampant Russophobia that prevails and only benefits the military-industrial complex".
33.
Clare Daly responded by accusing Ukraine's government of a "smear campaign against international figures who refuse to toe the line".
34.
Wallace and Clare Daly tabled amendments on behalf of the Left, seeking to "water down" resolutions against Russia.
35.
Clare Daly said that the Russian occupation of Crimea since 2014 "has the clear support of the majority of the population".
36.
In January 2022, Clare Daly described the Russian military buildup on Ukraine's border as being "clearly defensive" and said there is "no evidence that Russia has any desire to invade Ukraine, it would be of no benefit to them".
37.
On 2 March 2022, Clare Daly was one of 13 MEPs who voted against a resolution condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
38.
Clare Daly was criticised by constituents and others in Ireland.
39.
Clare Daly later said that she opposed Russia's invasion but had voted against the resolution because it stated support for NATO and had called for weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
40.
Clare Daly accused NATO of "destabilising the area for the past decade".
41.
Clare Daly has opposed sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
42.
Clare Daly said that "the ordinary people of Europe" would pay for the sanctions and "not a single Ukrainian life will be saved".
43.
Clare Daly added that the EU and military-industrial complex were "fanning the flames" of a "proxy war" with Russia.
44.
Clare Daly later accused the West of arming Ukraine "to keep the war going".
45.
In January 2023, Clare Daly voted against establishing a tribunal to investigate the Russian leadership for crimes of aggression against Ukraine.
46.
Clare Daly said "I condemn Russia's invasion and call for a withdrawal" and stated "even the warhawks in the Biden administration have resisted pressure to designate Russia a 'state sponsor of terrorism,' because doing so would close off options for negotiating humanitarian and peace efforts".
47.
Clare Daly denounced Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a "vicious anti-immigrant racist" and asked why MEPs were so outraged at his arrest by Russia's security forces.
48.
In November 2021, Clare Daly and Wallace travelled to Lithuania to support Algirdas Paleckis, a politician found guilty of spying for Russia's Federal Security Service in return for money.
49.
Clare Daly said the conviction was not based on evidence, and attended court when Paleckis' appeal was being heard.
50.
Clare Daly responded that journalists should "cover the work that we actually do instead of occupying your time with these constant attempts to construct elaborate guilt-by-association conspiracy theories".
51.
Clare Daly condemned Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip during the Gaza war and accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza.
52.
Clare Daly referred to von der Leyen as "Frau Genocide" and accused her of "overriding the foreign policies of elected governments all to cheerlead a brutal apartheid regime that she calls a 'vibrant democracy' as [it] pulverizes a city of children".
53.
Clare Daly expressed "revulsion at the likes of this disinformation".
54.
Clare Daly married political activist Michael Murphy in 1999, with whom she had one daughter.