Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin will not put down a motion of confidence in his leadership of Fianna F\u00e1il and says the controversy over the party\u2019s disastrous presidential election has \u201cdragged on too long\u201d.<\/p>\n
Responding to a suggestion from RT\u00c9\u2019s David McCullagh that he could settle the unrest in his party by putting down a motion of confidence in himself, he replied: \u201cI don\u2019t believe I need to, I don\u2019t believe I need to do that at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Martin again said he took \u201cfull responsibility\u201d for the campaign but said it should be considered alongside other electoral successes in 2024, including the local, European and general elections.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said Jim Gavin repeatedly denied that he had any issue with a tenant when questioned on the subject by Fianna F\u00e1il on a number of occasions. At the time the campaign was dealing with \u201callegations that were false\u201d about Mr Gavin who said he \u201cnever had a journalist as a tenant\u201d.<\/p>\n
There was no public record to confirm such a dispute and only \u201cthe primary sources\u201d could provide that information, Mr Martin said. \u201cJim Gavin was adamant on the issue.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, he insisted that \u201cJim Gavin came to the table with significant strengths.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Martin said polling had been done on potential candidates. He rejected the suggestion Mr Gavin should not have been considered because he had no political experience. \u201cAre we saying the presidency is exclusively a role for politicians?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n
Mr Martin disputed the timeline for the declaration of interest by MEP Billy Kelleher in running. There had not been any indication of such interest in a WhatsApp message from Mr Kelleher on August 14th, Mr Martin said. \u201cA phone call wouldn\u2019t have gone amiss.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe WhatsApp from Billy on the 14th of August was that he certainly wasn\u2019t going to be a candidate. That was what I took from that. Now Billy said I took the wrong conclusion from that and fair enough we all have different perspectives but the WhatsApp was very clear at the time,\u201d Mr Martin said. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I don\u2019t want to go back over all of that. Billy is a fine parliamentarian and so on but I got no indication from Billy that he wanted to be candidate until around the 26th or 27th.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Martin also rejected the suggestion that he \u201ccentralised\u201d decisions, took matters into his own hands and did not involve members of the parliamentary party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would take issue with that general characterisation. By the way, the previous year we won three general elections, we\u2019re the largest party in the local elections. The point is, in terms of, you\u2019ve got to look at this in the round, I said last night to the party, when I became leader in 2011, we had 20 seats. No one ever thought we\u2019d be four seats in the European Parliament, and we\u2019re back to four seats in European Parliament. That was a very effective election. <\/p>\n
\u201cCandidates were sounded out for the European election in the exact same way, it worked for us in that context, didn\u2019t work on this occasion. We decided not to launch in August. We thought we\u2019d be the wrong one to launch and in retrospect that was a wrong mistake and I was wrong. <\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone acted in good faith here. We wanted to win the election. We didn\u2019t have other candidates that had a chance, let\u2019s be frank, that\u2019s the reality,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe immediate polling after the nomination of Jim Gavin was positive, actually quite positive, and he was there both with the other candidates who were polled at that time and higher than any other Fianna F\u00e1il prospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, we should have gone earlier in August, in retrospect. In previous campaigns, people went in August and it proved damaging to their campaign. And it\u2019s a call you make at the time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin will not put down a motion of confidence in his leadership of Fianna F\u00e1il and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":195158,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[895,42,2043,1843,43,978,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-196466","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-fianna-fail","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-jim-gavin","11":"tag-micheal-martin","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-presidential-election","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}