Labour to select Midlands North West Euro candidate – Sunday 2pm
The Labour Party will hold our European Parliament selection convention for the Midlands North West constituency on Sunday 27th January at 2pm in Mullingar Park Hotel, Co Westmeath.
One candidate will be nominated, and there is a contest with two names going forward for selection. These are former Labour TD for Meath East Dominic Hannigan, and former head of Amnesty’s EU office, Iverna McGowan. Biographies are included at the end.
There will be a media doorstep after the convention at approximately 4pm.
Date: Sunday 27th January 2019.
Location: Mullingar Park Hotel, Dublin Road, Mullingar, Co Westmeath.
Time: 2pm
ENDS
For further information contact Siobhán de Paor on 085 121 0344
Dominic Hannigan
Dominic Hannigan is a former Councillor, Senator and TD for Meath East. In the Oireachtas he chaired first the Good Friday Agreement Committee and then the European Union Affairs Committee. He regularly speaks about Brexit and its potential impact on Ireland. A Civil Engineer by profession, Hannigan also holds Masters degrees in Transport and in Finance. For the last 8 years he has been a non-executive director of LGBT charity BelongTo.
Iverna McGowan
Iverna spent her childhood in Celbridge Co. Kildare before her family moved out to Navan Co. Meath where she then spent her formative years. Iverna was very involved in community life taking part regularly in shows with St Mary’s Musical Society Navan as well as shows with the town’s youth drama group. She studied European Studies at Trinity College Dublin and it was there with members of Labour Youth that she co-founded Europa Trinity’s European Affairs society which is still going strong today.
Following her graduating she travelled South America for six months. This trip was to prove a defining factor in her life – the fate in particular of the miners of Potosi a town in Bolivia left a mark and their working conditions were to form the basis of her later master thesis on the responsibility of international corporations for worker’s rights under international law. She went back to school and graduated as a Top3% Scholar with a Masters of Law (LL.M) from the European Law School of the University of Maastricht where she studied international and regional human rights law.
She has worked at the UN Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, at the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In September Iverna stepped down as Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office to contest the Euroepan Elections. She sat on the Advisory Panel to the EU’s Agency on Fundamental Rights and served as a board member for Transparency International. Last year she was listed as one of Politico’s TOP 20 WOMEN WHO INFLUENCE BRUSSELS. She has acted as global spokesperson on EU and European Foreign Affairs for many years and is a frequent contributor to outlets such as CNN, BBC, EuroNews, and Reuters.