Higgins adamant he will run in European elections

Higgins will be FG candidate for European elections


Neill O’Neill

JIM Higgins will contest the European elections on May 22 2014. The Ballyhaunis native confirmed his intentions at Sunday’s Fine Gael West Mayo local election selection convention in Westport.
The sitting MEP revealed that the selection convention for the European Election should be in February of next year. He added that the new redrawn Midlands-North-West constituency will be the single largest one in the whole of Europe, and urged his party faithful not to forget him and fellow Fine Gael MEP Mairéad McGuinness, when they go to the ballot box.
Jim Higgins was elected to DΡil Eireann on four occasions between 1987 and 2002, having also served as a Mayo County Councillor for 16 years. He was elected to the European Parliament for the North-West Ireland Constituency in June 2004. He was then re-elected on June 9, 2009. In recent years there was a lot of speculation that, with the reduced four seater Mayo constituency coming into play at the next general election, Fine Gael would run sitting TD John O’Mahony in the next European elections, with Minister of State Michael Ring even being linked with the post at one stage.
Sunday’s declaration by Jim Higgins would seem to have put an end to all such speculation, and Michael Ring also endorsed his campaign from the podium.
“This is a vast constituency and we will have a lot of competition but Jim Higgins has my full support and we need everybody to support him. We are lucky to have an MEP in this area, and we need an MEP in this area,” said Minister Ring.