Mary Hanafin: ‘credibility at stake’ over election nomination

Former Fianna Fáil minister Mary Hanafin said her "credibility was at stake" when the party asked her withdraw her local election nomination because the "story was out".

The candidate for Blackrock, Dublin also said the party had started to prepare her leaflets before asking her to withdraw from the race.

The former Minister for Education was speaking to The Irish Times ‘Inside Politics’ podcast after Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin insisted she was not an official candidate.

Ms Hanafin said she was contacted by journalists in The Irish Times and The Daily Mail on Friday because they heard she had been added to the nomination. This was before she received a call from Fianna Fáil on Friday night to say ‘they’ve changed their minds they don’t want you’, she said.

“So the word was out....So there was an issue for me as the story was out, it was going to be breaking and then how was I going to explain ‘oh yes you are, oh no you’re not (running)’,” she said.

“My credibility was at stake really from Friday night,” she said. She said that Mr Martin was “very anxious” that she should withdraw .

Mr Martin has also said the party would investigate Ms Hanafin’s open defiance of its recommendation she should not submit nomination papers for the local election after initially being asked to do so.

Ms Hanafin did not like the “implication” that she was given something “in trust and broke that trust” .

The Fianna Fáil party affiliation forms which she received “in trust”, are not given to candidates “until the very very last minute of the ratification process” when you have been “agreed and decided on and then you can lodge those papers”, she saud, Fianna Fáil headquarters on Mount Street had even started to prepare leaflets for her, she said.

Asked if she the council as a springboard for a return to the Dáil she replied that it had been such for “an awful lot of people” and she had always indicate that she would “like to return”.

“I was the last person standing in Dublin in the last election on the last count at about 9,000 votes, nobody knows what’s going to happen within a couple of years ...I very firmly remain committed,” she said.