Organisation to run at least one candidate in general election

Parental Equality, the organisation supporting the rights of separated and unmarried fathers, is to field at least one candidate…

Parental Equality, the organisation supporting the rights of separated and unmarried fathers, is to field at least one candidate in next year's general election.

Luke Martin is to run as an independent in the Louth constituency on equality issues.

Mr Martin, from Dundalk, said he would be campaigning for fathers' rights, including their right to have joint custody and guardianship of their children and their right to be named on their child's birth certificate.

In the last general election, four candidates ran as independents, for fathers' rights and were associated with Parental Equality.

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Mr Martin works with Parental Equality through Jobs Initiative, a Government-sponsored programme,

Divorced from his first wife with whom he had three children, he now has two children in his second marriage. Mr Martin said his campaign would be about equality.

"We are not against women, we are working for parental equality."

Liam Ó Gogáin, a founding member of Parental Equality, ran in Louth in 2002 and received 273 first preference votes.

He originally did not intend running again but said he would be a candidate in the Dublin South constituency of Minister for Social and Family Affairs Séamus Brennan if the Department of Social and Family Affairs did not remove its designation of him for social welfare purposes as a "deserting father".

He had had joint custody of his children for 15 years, and to be called a deserter "is like being called a rat".

Marie O'Halloran