IS MICHEÁL MARTIN DROWNING AMONG A SEA OF MEN IN SUITS?
nominee Senator Mary White, the first FF candidate selected, and who complained at a later appearance yesterday that she had not been told of arrangements.
He said he welcomed the gender quotas for the election and was confident FF would have 40 per cent women in the field, with ten selection conventions yet to take place – including Dún Laoghaire, where Kate Feeney, Mary Hanafin and Cormac Devlin are in the fray.
Mr Martin again ruled out coalition with Fine Gael and Sinn Féin. Asked if he still saw himself as the only alternative to Enda Kenny as taoiseach. ‘Yes, absolutely. That is the bottom line,’ he said.
The FF leader said he took from the Fine Gael think-in at Adare last week that FG’s electoral strategy ‘is to hide Enda Kenny in order to propel them to victory’.
He said it was up to the Taoiseach to debate the issues with him on television ‘and not to just go for soundbites’. He called for a series of ‘no holds barred’ debates between the two when the election campaign is called. ‘I’m ready to go,’ he said.
Fianna Fáil was in a good position, he argued, referring to a 25 per cent national share of the vote in the local and European elections last year ‘ and a very good by- election success with Bobby Aylward in Carlow-Kilkenny’.
Mr Martin said he would stay as leader, like Enda Kenny, even if his party re-entered Opposition when the votes are counted. ‘I have a task to renew and rebuild the party.’
He mocked Government chief whip Paul Kehoe for suggesting the Taoiseach could go on forever, saying even Mr Kenny had suggested he had engaged in a ‘free-flowing stream of consciousness’.
Fine Gael accused Mr Martin of confirming his party’s lack of a jobs policy in an RTÉ Radio interview. ‘This is in stark contrast to the Government’s Action Plan for Jobs which has added over 125,000 jobs to the economy to date and will [by 2018] replace all the jobs Fianna Fáil lost,’ a spokesman for the main Government party said. FF voted against tax cuts and USC cuts earlier this year, the spokesman added. Micheál Martin had ‘ruled out coalition and therefore entering Government’, the FG spokesman said.
‘But his newest TD Bobby Aylward said on the same programme that many Fianna Fáil members would like to enter Government with Sinn Féin as they come from the same republican background.’
Mr Martin said Mr Aylward was not advocating any such arrangement. ‘The opposite is the case, with a very strong centre ground opposed to Sinn Féin entering Government in any fashion.’
Comment – Page 12
‘Only alternative
to Enda is me’