A Galway city councillor has resigned from the Social Democrats.
Eibhlín Seoighthe, who represents the city’s central ward, was the party’s candidate in Galway West in last year’s general election. She polled 2,172 first preference votes before being eliminated on the 10th count.
A spokeswoman for the party confirmed Ms Seoighthe’s resignation.
Ms Seoighthe did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
It is understood that she informed party colleagues of the decision, which she told them had been made with a “heavy heart”, on Thursday morning. Ms Seoighthe did not expand on her reasons for leaving the party.
A party source acknowledged that the news came in the days after the Social Democrats ended the suspension of Dublin Bay South TD Eoin Hayes from the parliamentary party, but argued that Ms Seoighthe had not made an explicit link with this move so far.
Mr Hayes had been suspended for almost eight months after he gave misleading information about when he sold shares in a former employer, Palantir, which has lucrative contracts with the Israel Defense Forces.
Senator Patricia Stephenson on Friday said she was willing to give Mr Hayes a second chance as a member of the parliamentary party.
Speaking to reporters after the publication of the Oireachtas foreign affairs committee’s report on the Occupied Territories Bill (OTB), she said Mr Hayes “let down a lot of people” and “broke trust, and there’s trust building to be done”.
Asked if re-admitting him to the party undermined its credibility on issues such as the OTB, she said that was for the public to decide but she was “really proud to be associated with the Social Democrats”.
Asked if she trusted Mr Hayes, Ms Stephenson said she did not know him and had not worked with him but she trusted acting leader Cian O’Callaghan’s decision “to bring him back” into the parliamentary party, while acknowledging “there are diverse views” on the decision.
She said there was no vote on his re-instatement, it was a leadership decision and “that’s how it works” under the party constitution.
Sources in the Social Democrats earlier this week outlined the belief that following Mr Hayes’ readmission to the parliamentary party, there would be limited departures of staff, representatives or the membership.
One member, Martha Ní Riada, who also worked for Mr O’Callaghan, tweeted that she was resigning from the party following the decision.
