Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore vowed yesterday that his party would do nothing to undermine the position of the SDLP in Northern Ireland.
Moreover, he expressed doubts about the wisdom of any party from the Republic attempting to contest an election in the North until powersharing arrangements have had a chance to bed down.
Mr Gilmore was commenting in the context of a motion for debate at the Labour Party's annual conference in Wexford in a week's time calling on the party to contest the local government elections in the North. The conference will take place from next Friday until Sunday.
The Labour leader said he felt that reports of a Fianna Fáil move into the North, either in terms of a merger with the SDLP or as a party in its own right, had been exaggerated and he felt that such a development was not likely to take place any time soon.
Mr Gilmore added that some people in the SDLP undoubtedly favoured a merger with Fianna Fáil, but others favoured a link up with Labour. But some favoured neither option, preferring to keep good relations with all the parties in the Republic. He said the SDLP should be respected for all that it had achieved and for its potential to influence politics in the North for the better in the years ahead.
The Labour Party has members in the North who are involved in the Northern Ireland Labour Forum. One motion at the party conference, tabled by the national executive, calls for an exploration of the potential for members to stand for election.
Mr Gilmore said that local elections in the Republic in the summer of 2009 would provide an opportunity for the party to blood new candidates and he said they would in effect be primaries in so far as potential general election candidates were concerned.
One motion for debate at the conference from the Wicklow constituency council calls for the development of a clear selection strategy to win more than one seat in each constituency at the next election. Moreover, it advocates the establishment of a committee to devise a plan to achieve this objective. An amendment from the Clondalkin branch calls for a second candidate in all constituencies where there is already a well-established TD.
Another motion from the executive proposes the establishment of a commission on 21st century Labour which would examine and report on all aspects of the party's organisation and political activity to make recommendations on the role the party should have in modern Ireland.
The motion refers to the approaching centenary of the party's foundation in 1912 and suggests that it is the appropriate time to establish such a commission.
The first motion on the agenda commits the party to the establishment of a universal system of health insurance to deliver equality of access and treatment to the health service as a right for everybody in Ireland.
Another motion calls on the conference to support the Shell to Sea campaign while another calls for the adoption of The Red Flag, written by Irishman Jim Connell, as the party's anthem instead of its present call to arms, The Watchword of Labour, written by James Connolly.