A member of Fine Gael has brought High Court proceedings challenging a decision of party headquarters to allow only sitting FG councillors in the Dún Laoghaire electoral area to run in June's local elections.
Naja Regan, a law graduate from Brighton Avenue in Monkstown in Dublin, claims she was deprived of her opportunity to contest last Thursday's selection convention even though she had been put forward as a candidate by the Monkstown Fine Gael branch.
She is seeking an injunction requiring the party trustees, including leader Enda Kenny, to hold a new convention and a declaration that the party is in breach of its own rules and constitution by having allegedly wrongly deprived her of her opportunity to be selected.
Ms Justice Mary Laffoy granted permission to Ms Regan's lawyers to serve the proceedings at short notice on the Fine Gael trustees and the case will be back before the High Court on Friday.
Gerard Hogan SC, for Ms Regan, who made the application on an ex-parte basis, said he would be seeking an early trial of the proceedings in view of the fact that the local elections will take place in June.
In an affidavit, Ms Regan said that after she was proposed and seconded at last Thursday's convention, the guest chairperson then informed the meeting that a directive had been given by the Fine Gael executive council ‘to the effect or like effect’ that the three sitting-councillors in Dún Laoghaire must be selected by the convention.
There was no vote taken and this, says Ms Regan, is in breach of the party's rules that say that eligible Fine Gael members have an express entitlement to vote at a convention.
She also says that those who have been properly nominated have an entitlement to be considered for selection by those entitled to vote, ‘subject only to the lawful directive of the executive council of the party.’
She says she has been legally advised that the directive in this case was ‘a very clear violation’ of the constitution and rules of the party on the basis, among other reasons, that it cannot exclude a candidate from being voted on by identifying those (three sitting councillors) who are to be selected by the convention.
Ms Regan says a very large number of other party members present at the meeting objected to the directive and she believes, had there been a vote, she would have been selected.
She also says there was a previous attempt by the party's executive council to impose candidates by way of interview but this option was dropped, and a convention convened, following correspondence between her and the executive council.
Concerned that a directive as to who could run would be imposed at the convention, Ms Regan wrote to the party trustees whose solicitor informed her that he did not know about anything about such a directive.
She decided not to go to the courts at that point but to go to the convention.
Given what had happened and the proximity of the local elections, she says that only an early trial will enable her to obtain an effective remedy.
