Ciarán Cuffe has thanked the electorate after topping the poll and being first elected in the Dublin constituency in the 2019 European Elections.

Shortly after being elected on Monday evening Ciarán Cuffe MEP said:
“This was the climate change election. This has been an election where the future of Europe and the future of the Planet hangs in the balance. These elections have shown us that we need to be ambitious, and we need to act, now. Young Irish students with their climate strikes have shown us the ‘fierce urgency of now’.

“We all have a huge responsibility to younger generations to act boldly and to act now. The future can’t wait. Young people are informed, motivated, worried, and mobilised. The Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote: The young “will not forgive in us what we forgave.” Political parties ignore them at their peril.

“Parents are concerned, and responded to their children’s needs. They want us to act. Councils, Governments and European Institutions cannot ignore their call.

“People want green. They want solutions: more clean buses; less cars. Decent homes at affordable rents in Dublin, not shoeboxes. They want clean air, clean water, trees and green spaces. They want a city for children, not traffic. They want Dublin to be a liveable city, just like Vienna.

“Europe can help make it easier to choose green, to make choices that provide clean energy, green agriculture, sustainable transport, and low-energy housing.

“Seamus Heaney wrote “The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” Those of us in public life must do the same.

“People voted Climate, they voted Green and they want action from all levels of Government to make their lives easier, to act on climate; let’s get to work!
ENDS