SINN FÉIN:THE PRESIDENT of Sinn Féin, Gerry Adams, launched his campaign to be elected as a TD for Louth last night with the claim that "Ireland is at a crossroads".
Speaking to a gathering of around 500 supporters at the Fairways Hotel in Dundalk, Mr Adams also said there has “never been a greater need for republican politics”.
He repeated his party policy that the “ banking private debt” should be separated from the “sovereign/exchequer debt”.
During his address to the crowd, Mr Adams quoted from James Connolly and also hunger striker Bobby Sands.
He said every generation of republicans had to act “in their own time and in 2011 we act not as they did in 1916”.
He spoke of the importance of every vote in the election and encouraged the crowd to canvas informally. “Twitter for Irish freedom, text for Sinn Féin,” he added.
Outgoing Sinn Féin TD in Louth Arthur Morgan told the crowd that Adams “is a Republican leader, perhaps the most influential since Wolfe Tone.” He would, Mr Morgan said, “add a huge dynamic to the Dáil,” and could be part of changing the “course of Irish political history”.
Party vice-president Mary Lou McDonald said Mr Adams “will enter the Dáil with a team of Sinn Féin TDs not to make up the numbers, not to sit on our laurels but to go in and represent the men and women of low income, of no income and of middle income and the men and women of property and of no property”.
She added: “Our job as republicans is to reach our stated goals: Irish unity, social and economic equality . . . Change is the watchword of this campaign.”
Mr Adams was introduced by Donegal South West TD Pearse Doherty who said that in the next three weeks “the people of this State have a serious chance to change the direction this country is going in and, by God, do we need a change of direction”.
“This election is not about faces or political dynasties but what you can offer people on the ground, what you can do for people who are suffering.”
He said many people believed Fine Gael and Labour “will waltz into government and I want to say to those people who believe that, you will be deeply, deeply disappointed”.
When the last Fine Gael-Labour coalition left government in 1987 “the unemployment rate was at 17 percent, 4 percent higher than today,” he said.