Proinsias De Rossa (born 15 May 1940) is a former Irish Labour Party politician. He was President of the Workers' Party and subsequently leader of Democratic Left; later, he was a senior member of the Labour Party. He was Minister for Social Welfare from 1994 to 1997. He was a Member of the European Parliament for the Dublin constituency from 1989 to 1992 and from 1999 to 2012.

Born as Francis Ross in 1940 in Dublin, he was educated at Marlborough Street National School and Dublin Institute of Technology. Soon after his sixteenth birthday, in May 1956, he joined the IRA, and was politically active in Sinn Féin from an early age. During the IRA Border Campaign, he was captured training IRA members in Glencree in May 1956, served seven months in Mountjoy Prison and was then interned at the Curragh Camp.

He worked in his family's fruit and vegetable shop and later was employed as a postman and an encyclopaedia salesman. He took the Official Sinn Féin side in the 1970 split. In 1977 he contested his first general election for the party, which that year was renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party (in 1982 the name changed again to the Workers' Party).

Declan James Ganley (born 23 July 1968) is an Irish entrepreneur, businessman and political activist. He is founder and chairman of a political party, Libertas with pan-European ambitions. The party was unsuccessful in this ambition in the 2009 European Parliament Election, succeeding in getting only one of the hundreds of candidates elected, in France.

Ganley himself was unsuccessful in this election, securing less than 10% of the valid poll. Ganley has started companies in forestry, telecommunications and the Internet and is currently serving as chairman of the board of Rivada Networks. During the 2008 Irish referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon, Ganley and the Libertas Institute campaigned for a No vote. He again campaigned for a No vote in the Irish European Fiscal Compact referendum, 2012.

Ganley was born in Watford, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, of Irish parents. He returned with his parents to live in Glenamaddy, County Galway, Ireland, at the age of 13, and today lives in Abbeyknockmoy, County Galway with his American wife Delia and their four young children.

Bernard Lehideux (born 23 September 1944 in Paris) is a French politician and Member of the European Parliament for the Île-de-France. He is a member of the Union for French Democracy, which is part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, and sits on the European Parliament's Committee on Employment and Social Affairs.

He is also a substitute for the Committee on Development, a member of the delegation to the ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly, and a substitute for the delegation to the EU–Chile Joint Parliamentary Committee.

Marian Harkin (born 26 November 1953) is an Irish politician and is currently a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the North-West constituency.

Harkin was born in Ballintogher, County Sligo in 1953. She is a graduate of University College Dublin with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. She worked as a teacher of mathematics in a secondary school in Sligo town for 23 years. She lived in Manorhamilton, County Leitrim with her husband, Seán Harkin, where he ran a grocery business until his death in 1996. After her husband's death, Harkin and her two sons moved to Sligo town where they currently live.

While living in Manorhamilton, Harkin became active in the voluntary and community sector and developed the view that people living in disadvantaged areas such as Connacht had to rely on their own initiative and energy to progress development of their region. Her work at local level led to her appointment to Developing the West Together, which evolved into the Council for the West, of which Harkin became chairperson.