Rumours that Libertas would become a political party began as soon as the Lisbon I referendum rejected the Treaty of Lisbon,[6] and attention eventually moved to whether Libertas would run candidates in Ireland.[7] On 14 March 2009, Ganley held a press conference and announced that it would.[8] Libertas Ireland, (the Libertas national party in Ireland and a party in its own right) was founded on 29 April 2009,[1] some months after the pan-European party was founded in 2008.
At the launch of his party's 2009 European Parliament campaign, Declan Ganley encouraged voters to vote for Libertas as a protest against existing parties, said that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were part of a political cartel and that opinion polls that put his party at 2 per cent in the polls disagreed with Libertas own polling.[11] Ganley said that he would step down as party leader if he failed to be elected in the North–West constituency.[11]
Simons criticised Proinsias De Rossa at the launch of the EU parliament campaign, saying that he had been in the parliament for fifteen years and would be seventy next year, but she denied she was discriminating against older people.[11]
O'Malley said that Ireland should close its borders to workers from other EU countries while appearing on The Last Word on Today FM.[12]
Ganley was not elected; he called for a recount in his constituency and, as a result, his official number of first preferences was reduced by 3,000 from 70,638 when it was discovered that some votes for Fiachra O'Luain has been mistakenly bundled with his.[13] Neither Caroline Simons nor Raymond O'Malley were elected either.[14][15] Kathy Sinnott also lost her seat.
In November 2009, the party was removed from the Register of Political Parties in Ireland.[2] In June 2010, Ganley applied to the Companies Registration Office (CRO) to have the Libertas Party and the Libertas Foundation to be struck off voluntarily. The group had filed no accounts.[16] As of 2010, the Libertas Institute remained active as a think-tank.[17][18]
^ abcdefghThe Register of Political Parties did not indicate who the leader of Libertas was: it stated who the party officers authorised to certify candidates were, and those party officers were John McGuirk, Sean Ganley, Norrie Keane and Eilis Mulroy
^ abGovernment of Ireland (13 November 2009). Iris Oifigiúil(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original on 14 June 2011. Retrieved 21 June 2010.
^Richard Dunphy (2015). "Ireland". In Donatella M. Viola (ed.). Routledge Handbook of European Elections. Routledge. p. 247. ISBN978-1-317-50363-7. Archived from the original on 26 December 2018. Retrieved 23 September 2021.
Member parties are members of Libertas.eu. Members of member parties are automatically members of Libertas.eu unless they choose otherwise.
2
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3
Parties presenting as Libertas.eu affiliates/members but not sanctioned by Libertas.eu when presentation commenced.
