{"id":42270,"date":"2025-09-25T08:03:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T08:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/42270\/"},"modified":"2025-09-25T08:03:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T08:03:11","slug":"maria-steen-protests-being-shut-out-of-presidential-race-after-nominations-shortfall-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/42270\/","title":{"rendered":"Maria Steen protests being shut out of presidential race after nominations shortfall \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conservative campaigner Maria Steen<\/a> has complained of being shut out of the presidential election after her bid to secure 20 Oireachtas nominations fell two short on Wednesday, leaving just three candidates to contest the vote on October 24th.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael<\/a>\u2019s Heather Humphreys<\/a>, Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a>\u2019s Jim Gavin<\/a> and Independent candidate Catherine Connolly<\/a>, who is supported by Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a>, Labour<\/a>, the Social Democrats<\/a>, People Before Profit<\/a> and the Green Party<\/a>, will be the only names on the ballot paper.<\/p>\n

After a frantic final few days of campaigning, Ms Steen failed to secure the required 20 nominations after a group of Independent Senators \u2013 including Michael McDowell<\/a> \u2013 that had been the focus of her supporters as potential nominators refused to facilitate her bid.<\/p>\n

Mr McDowell and his colleagues were the subject of fierce criticism from supporters of Ms Steen.<\/p>\n

Aont\u00fa<\/a> leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/a>, who had been marshalling support for Ms Steen, said \u201cFianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael and their so-called Independents pulled up the ladder to stop Maria Steen from challenging them in this election.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Presidential election 2025 has smallest field of candidates in 35 yearsOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Speaking at Leinster House, Ms Steen said: \u201cWhile I\u2019m honoured to have received 90 per cent of the signatures required from members of the Oireachtas, I regret to say that it\u2019s not enough, and that time has now run out.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added: \u201cI entered this race with a hope of giving voters a real choice. The response from the public in recent days confirms the hunger that there is for an alternative candidate. Sadly, that hunger will now go unsatisfied.<\/p>\n

\u201cRarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public,\u201d Ms Steen added.<\/p>\n

Independent Ireland<\/a>, which backed Ms Steen\u2019s nomination, said this year\u2019s presidential election had highlighted \u201can affront to democracy that can no longer be ignored\u201d. <\/p>\n

It has started drafting a Bill to effectively make it easier to get on the ticket, which it said it would seek to bring forward \u201cas soon as the legislative process allows\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe current system is convoluted and places far too much power in the hands of too few people,\u201d party leader Michael Collins said.<\/p>\n

But speaking in New York, where he is attending the UN<\/a> general assembly, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> rejected the criticism.<\/p>\n

\u201cClearly those who can garner a significant breadth of support are the people who ultimately get selected as candidates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s quite extraordinary that the people who have been criticising Fianna F\u00e1il for quite a number of years now expect us to support their candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conservative campaigner Maria Steen has complained of being shut out of the presidential election after her bid to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[895,3775,8934,42,25919,14885,1843,43,17861,30645,978,3415,1419,40,38,41,39,23242],"class_list":["post-42270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-fianna-fail","tag-fine-gael","tag-green-party","tag-headlines","tag-independent-ireland","tag-maria-steen","tag-micheal-martin","tag-news","tag-peadar-toibin","tag-people-before-profit-alliance","tag-presidential-election","tag-sinn-fein","tag-social-democrats","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-nations-un"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270","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=42270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}