The Connacht-Ulster MEP, Ms Dana Rosemary Scallon, says she has reported a series of threats, intimidating phone calls and mail received by her during the election campaign to the Garda.
Ms Scallon, who was eliminated on the seventh count in Galway West, is now being accompanied wherever she travels, according to her husband, Mr Damien Scallon. He was speaking to The Irish Times after one of her supporters referred to the threats on RTÉ radio's Liveline programme yesterday.
The MEP had become worried about the threats following the assassination of the Dutch right-wing politician, Pim Fortuyn. "We are being extra-vigilant, while not wanting to make too much of that," Mr Scallon said. Yesterday Ms Scallon said she regretted that it had become public knowledge, because she had young children and was concerned about her mother.
Ms Scallon's campaign team, led by her brother, Mr John Browne, said that abusive phone calls came to her office in Galway last year. The calls had been intermittent, but a letter sent to her office during the election campaign claimed that if she was elected she would never get as far as the Dáil.
The campaign team believes the calls may be linked to her stance during the abortion referendum in February, when she called for a No vote. She was strongly criticised by members of the Galway for Life campaign.
"During the election campaign we could not have been received with more courtesy or kindness by the people of Galway," Ms Scallon commented yesterday. "But when we received this letter on top of the phone calls and then a politician was killed in a foreign country a few days later, well, you do have to pay a certain amount of attention to it."