The Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins, is adamant that he will remain a political loner in Leinster House, writes Michael O'Regan, Parliamentary Reporter
Mr Joe Higgins has ruled out participating in any alternative Rainbow alliance to the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Coalition.
The Socialist Party TD for Dublin West said that while he would co-operate with other deputies and parties on various issues, and remain part of the Dáil's technical group, there were no circumstances in which he would share power with them.
"My party's aim is to construct an alternative to capitalism and to the establishment parties. You cannot construct an alternative if you are part of an establishment government," he said.
Mr Higgins insisted that nobody else in the Dáil would embrace the programme put forward by the Socialist Party, which he helped found in 1996.
"Labour has moved to the right, and is not a party of the working class, in our view.
"Our party is a clear socialist party. We believe that the financial institutions and the main industrial conglomerates should be in public ownership and under democratic control. We believe that the economy should be democratically planned on the basis of people's needs rather than the greed of a minority, which is currently the case." He retains the equivalent of the average industrial wage from his Dáil salary and donates the rest to the party.
In the first term of the new Dáil, Mr Higgins emerged as the most effective performer among the technical group, an informal alliance of the Green Party, Sinn Féin and a number of Independents who have come together to secure more Dáil time under the House's standing orders.
Laced with humour and a clever use of language, his comments have sometimes outshone those of the Fine Gael leader, Mr Enda Kenny, and Labour leader, Mr Pat Rabbitte, in questioning the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
He makes frequent references to the rights of working people, with withering criticisms of the captains of industry who, he occasionally notes, can be found rubbing shoulders with Mr Ahern in the Fianna Fáil hospitality tent at the Galway Races.
The Taoiseach's reference to Mr Higgins's foreign contacts related to the Socialist Party's affiliation with the Committee for Workers International. "This," said Mr Higgins, "is an international movement with groups in various parts of the world ... Internationalism is a key element of socialism going back to James Connolly."
Born in 1949 in Lispole, Co Kerry, he is one of nine children of a small farmer. He was educated at Lispole national school and at Dingle CBS before spending time in a Catholic seminary in Minnesota in the US. He returned to Ireland to take a degree at UCD and taught for a few years in an inner-city school in Dublin.
The former clerical student no longer believes in Catholicism. "I am an atheist. You are born into the Catholic Church here in the same way as you are born into a different set of beliefs elsewhere. When you get to think critically for yourself, you might come to a different conclusion."
As a member of the Labour Party in the 1970s and 80s - he served for some years on the party's administrative council - he strongly opposed coalition.
"As a result of that struggle, myself and others were expelled from the party in the late 1980s. I was selected by the constituency organisation in Dublin West to stand for the Dáil and the council and I think that precipitated the right wing of the party to move for my expulsion. They knew that if I came into the Dáil, I would not be there to play games."
Mr Higgins was elected to Dublin county council in 1991 and is a member of Fingal County Council. He contested the 1992 general election in Dublin West, and, four years later, came close to causing a political sensation when he almost beat Fianna Fáil's Mr Brian Lenihan in a by-election. He finally won a seat in 1997.
His disdain for any political ideology other than his own is palpable. Branded a communist in heated exchanges with Fianna Fáil and PD, he is dismissive of their rhetoric.
"In the Dáil, they are ignorant of the history of socialism. When they call you a communist, they hang what existed in Russia around your neck. My tradition has vehemently opposed at all stages the bureaucracy in the Stalinist countries and Stalinism itself, which was a vicious perversion of genuine socialism."