Fianna F\u00e1il has agreed to support a move to legalise nuclear energy.<\/p>\n
At its parliamentary party meeting last night, TDs, Senators and MEPs agreed to support Cork East TD James O’Connor’s bill to reverse the ban on nuclear energy in Ireland at a time when the Coalition grapples with the ongoing energy crisis.<\/p>\n
It is understood Deputy O’Connor told his colleagues that his proposal was not a vote to build a nuclear power station, but rather a vote to remove a blindfold and to allow Ireland assess all serious options.<\/p>\n
The proposal was supported by several TDs from the floor.<\/p>\n
Minister for Energy Darragh O’Brien said while he was agnostic on the use of nuclear power, he believed it should be open to consideration by Ireland.<\/p>\n
Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said Ireland “should not have a statutory bar” on the consideration of nuclear energy.<\/p>\n
The parliamentary party also discussed Fianna F\u00e1il’s weekend bye-election results, which included the party’s worst bye-election showing in 100 years.<\/p>\n
The party accrued 4.2% in Dublin Central with Councillor John Stephens and 8.8% with Councillor Cillian Keane in Galway West.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin told the meeting how bye-elections were not a predictor of general elections to come and pointed to bye-elections in Dublin Bay South in 2021 and Dublin South West in 2014 where the party held or gained a seat in the subsequent General Election.<\/p>\n
The Dublin Bay South showing was the party’s worst ever bye-election performance before the weekend.<\/p>\n
Mr Martin also referenced the Dublin Mid-West bye-election in 2019 where the party’s candidate, Shane Moynihan, returned to win a seat in the 2024 General Election.<\/p>\n
However, several speakers expressed disappointment in the vote accrued by the Fianna F\u00e1il candidates over the weekend.<\/p>\n
They said they were a number of different factors which they felt needed to be addressed.<\/p>\n
Speaking afterwards, one TD critical of Mr Martin’s leadership described the parliamentary party discussion of the weekend’s bye-elections as “tame enough”, a further indication the Fianna F\u00e1il leadership question has been parked for the duration of the EU presidency at least.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fianna F\u00e1il has agreed to support a move to legalise nuclear energy. At its parliamentary party meeting last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":469055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-469054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469054","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=469054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/469055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}