Lorna Bogue has served as Councillor for Cork City South-East on Cork County Council since 2019. She began her career as an activist for reproductive and environmental justice. She is a former press officer for the Cork Together for Yes campaign and has worked in call centres for various multinational companies.

The principal imperatives of European policy in the last four decades have been to reduce the cost of labour while increasing the role of the market in the provision of public goods.

European Union responses to major crises from climate to the coronavirus are in effect offloaded to market actors. This has resulted in large-scale inaction on reducing carbon emissions, addressing the effects of underdevelopment and deindustrialisation, and improving rights for workers and carers.

The most important issue for the European Union is taking account of its failures in these areas as well as its irresponsible geopolitical role in supporting Israel's genocide in Gaza and prolonging the war in Ukraine.

I will join the Left Group. I am an eco-socialist rather than a green and see climate action, workers’ rights and economic reform as their priorities. I align mostly with the majority positions of the Left group, although this group is quite diverse and I do not agree with everything. While the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament often find themselves in agreement with the Left, I find that many of the positions held by Green politicians at the European level are not reflected in the policy of Green Parties in national governments of member states. As an eco-socialist I value consistency and honesty with voters over propagandising climate inaction.

You should vote for me if you think that workers and carers should have more agency in their workplaces, communities and homes. I have been a Cork city councillor for five years and want to bring that experience of the frontline of the problems in peoples’ everyday lives to a higher political level. I think workers and carers do not have the political representation they require at any level of governance. Instead, we have edicts for eco-austerity and inaction which place the blame and economic burden on the people who can least afford it. As a MEP, my priority will be developing a political programme and organising across a constituency of two million people for a people-centred politics aimed at a radical economic and social shift in the direction of workers and carers and decarbonisation without eco-austerity.