The Limerick lecturer challenging the nomination of the former Supreme Court judge, Mr Hugh O'Flaherty, to the European Investment Bank has confirmed he will be standing in the next General Election.
Mr Denis Riordan, the 53-year-old lecturer in marine communications at Limerick Institute of Technology, said he would be standing in Limerick East. He said that decision had been made long before his Supreme Court challenge. He is due to lodge notice of appeal to the Supreme Court tomorrow or Wednesday following the High Court ruling against his challenge to the nomination. He will seek an injunction preventing the nomination.
"I stood in the 1997 general election, the 1999 European and local elections and in the 1987 general election," and he plans to contest elections in the future. The attention he had received from the challenge to Mr O'Flaherty "will probably get me a somewhat better vote, but I am not pompous enough to think I will get elected. In the last general election I got just 112 votes, when there was a valid poll of 50,000 so my vote is minuscule."
Asked if he at least expected that he would get his deposit back, Mr Riordan said he would have to get about 2,000 votes or 25 per cent of the quota.
Another case he has taken comes up on June 26th in the High Court. Mr Riordan has challenged judgments made by eight judges of the Supreme Court in various cases since 1994. The Chief State Solicitor's Office has lodged a motion to dismiss the case as an "abuse of process".
