Mick Murphy (Irish Socialist Party politician)

Mick Murphy is a former Irish socialist elected representative. He was a Socialist Party councillor for Tallaght Central.
Murphy was born in County Tipperary and graduated as an engineer in Cork Regional Technical College (forerunner of Cork IT). He was twice elected president of the Students' Union and twice elected Campaigns Organiser of the national union, the Union of Students in Ireland (USI). As a USI officer Murphy was active on the abortion information rights campaign.
Murphy was a member of the Militant Tendency of the Labour Party. Murphy was expelled from the Labour Party in 1989 along with other members of Militant Tendency. Murphy went on to form Militant Labour and in 1996 the Socialist Party. Murphy was a full-time organiser for the Anti-Water charges campaign in the mid 1990s. He ran in the 1997 general election and received 2,206 votes (4.8%) and in the 1999 local elections he received 753 votes (8.3%), coming close to a Council seat.
He was a key organiser of the Anti-Bin Tax Campaign in the Tallaght area. He was the last of the 22 activists to be sent to jail in October 2003. He was sent to Mountjoy Prison for three weeks for his prominent role opposing the non-collection of refuse. In the 2004 local election he won 2,505 first preference votes (16.1%) and was first elected in his ward.
In 2009 he failed to retain his seat, due to the redrawing of the Tallaght Central ward despite polling higher than the Fianna Fail candidate.
Murphy, alongside Joe Higgins, came to national attention for his exposure of the GAMA scandal. Turkish firm, GAMA Construction, paid Turkish and Kurdish workers in Ireland as low as €2.20 per hour.

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