AT LEAST four newly formed groups are working towards registering as political parties ahead of the next general election.

The groups were formed in recent months and are at very early stages of development. The membership of each falls short of the 300 required by the Register of Political Parties.

All are holding meetings this month to boost membership and draw up policies. One group, Fís Nua, or New Vision, said it has close to 100 members.

Fís Nua is a splinter group of the Green Party and two of its most prominent personalities, former MEP Patricia McKenna and Pat Kavanagh, are former Green Party members who became disillusioned with the party after it entered Coalition.

The other groups were formed to address what they claim are “democratic deficits” in the political process.

The main platform of Direct Democracy Ireland, which held a meeting in Dublin last night, is to allow citizens to petition for a referendum to allow Government decisions be negated.

It also wants mechanisms introduced to grant the electorate the power to sack TDs and Senators who are not performing satisfactorily. The group’s founder is Raymond Whitehead. He came to prominence in the 1980s when he owned a restaurant in Temple Bar and organised local residents and businesses to campaign against over-development of the district.

“People would like to be either consulted or have a mechanism where they could call a referendum if they felt strongly over an issue,” he said.

Others associated with the group are environmental campaigner Vincent Salafia and a community activist Bernard Kenny.

A former local election candidate is also trying to form a party to replace Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Leo Armstrong ran as an Independent candidate in Clane, Co Kildare, last year, but was unsuccessful. A meeting to form a new party will be held in Kilkenny on July 21st.

A Cork businessman, Michael Murphy, describing himself as an “ordinary Joe Soap”, hopes to set up the Reform Party to effect a “democratic revolution”.