Heaney no longer FG's presidential candidate

FINE GAEL said yesterday that it was no longer pursuing the possibility of Nobel Laureate poet Seamus Heaney contesting this year’s presidential election on behalf of the party.

Senior party member Brian Hayes accepted yesterday that Mr Heaney was no longer a possibility as a candidate and said the party would now look at all the options open to it in its quest for a candidate.

The party’s director of elections Phil Hogan wrote to Mr Heaney in the autumn of 2010 inviting him to consider standing as the party’s candidate.

Mr Heaney (71), is said to have declined the invitation but indicated that he might consider going forward as an agreed cross-party candidate.

However, both other main parties yesterday seemed to rule out that possibility and also indicated that neither had been approached about the possibility of Mr Heaney running as an agreed candidate.

Mr Heaney, born and raised in Co Derry, has been living in Wicklow and Dublin since the 1970s.

He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.

His two most recent collections, District and Circle(2006) and The Human Chain(2010) have both won widespread critical praise.

The independent senator David Norris has already said he will stand as a candidate in the autumn election to choose a successor to President Mary McAleese.