Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin has insisted he will lead Fianna F\u00e1il into the next election.<\/p>\n
He was also defiant that he \u201chadn\u2019t seen anything off\u201d in terms of a leadership challenge following a week that saw criticism from Fianna F\u00e1il backbenchers.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, three of the party\u2019s youngest TDs issued a letter criticising the handling of recent fuel price protests, in which they said they viewed \u201cevents of the past few weeks with a real and deep concern\u201d.<\/p>\n
The sense across the party is very supportive and very warm<\/p>\n
Micheal Martin<\/p>\n
This was followed by other party members voicing their disquiet at the Government\u2019s handling of fuel protests and blockades, although on Friday, Cabinet ministers gave their backing to the Taoiseach.<\/p>\n
Speaking to the media in Dublin on Sunday, the Taoiseach said he had a mandate and was elected as Fianna F\u00e1il leader just a year and a half ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will fulfil my mandate and lead into the next set of elections,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He also insisted he had received a warm reception from his party over the events on Friday and Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in Mullingar on Friday night, close to 400 grassroots members of the party in our centenary event, and there was a very, very warm and positive reception from the grassroots of the party,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnybody who knows me, any members of the parliamentary party know that I\u2019ve knocked on doors with them on streets, and I have to be very strongly assertive on this point, I\u2019ve been elected in many elections, I\u2019m very connected to people\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m on the ground almost permanently, on a seven day a week basis, and I will continue to engage with my parliamentary party, we continue to seek new ways to broaden and structure engagement better.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sense across the party is very supportive and very warm.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed further, Martin said he was first elected in 1989 and has a \u201cfair idea of tough times\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a war situation in the Middle East, which has created a lot of pressure on families and on people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our role and our objective is to seek ways to try and structurally alleviate the pressures on people because I think we have to accept the fact that there will be perhaps further shocks, we hope that the dialogue will continue in the Middle East and we get a resolution and an end to the war.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin has insisted he will lead Fianna F\u00e1il into the next election. He was also defiant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-406860","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406860","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=406860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}