A decade on from winning four seats in the 2016 general election, Independents 4 Change are no more.
The party, best known for being the home of former TD and MEP Clare Daly, informed the Electoral Commission of their decision to deregister and cease to exist as a political entity.
The party, formed in 2014, was born into a political environment which saw resistance towards austerity, water charges, neoliberalism and tapped into Irish distrust of the European Union project.
Early success for the party saw it elect three TDs in Dublin; Clare Daly (who won in Dublin Fingal), Tommy Broughan (who won in Dublin Bay North) and Joan Collins (who won in Dublin South Central) were elected under the party’s banner, and were joined by Wexford property developer Mick Wallace in the 32nd Dáil.
The party teamed up with left-wing independent TDs Catherine Connolly, Thomas Pringle and Dublin Central TD Maureen O’Sullivan to form a technical group, which afforded the party speaking time in the 32nd Dáil.
Broughan subsequently left the party in July 2016 – Broughan saw out the rest of his time as a TD for Dublin Bay North as an independent – but the party saw further success in 2019 when Daly and Wallace were elected to the European Parliament.
Collins was re-elected as a TD for Independents4Change at the 2020 general election, but left the party in 2020 to form Right2Change, leaving the party without a TD in the Dáil.
The party’s slow decline to extinction became pronounced in 2024, when Daly and Wallace lost their seats in the European Parliament elections.
The 2024 European Parliament election in Dublin saw Sinn Féin MEP Lynn Boylan win back the seat she lost in 2019, while Labour TD Aodhán Ó Ríordáin won Labour’s first European seat in the capital since 2009.
Daly’s attempted political comeback – a Dáil run in Dublin Central in the 2024 general election – failed to catch fire, with Daly receiving less than 5% of first preferences as the historic anti-establishment vote in the constituency went elsewhere.
During their time as MEPs, Daly and Wallace became controversial for consistently abstaining or voting against motions which criticised authoritarian regimes such as China, Russia and Iran, and abstaining on or voting against motions to provide aid to Ukraine in the aftermath of the Russian invasion in 2022.
In the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Daly courted controversy by saying the European Union had “accelerated” the conflict, claiming that Russia had “genuine security concerns in the region.”
At the time of dissolution, the party had just one elected representative, Swords councillor Dean Mulligan, who is now likely to sit as an independent councillor.