Mary Hanafin looks unlikely to stand down

Former minister Mary Hanafin has until noon today to withdraw as a local election Fianna Fáil candidate in the Blackrock ward in Co Dublin, but looks increasingly unlikely to do so. Ms Hanafin posed for a photograph yesterday with her certificate of nomination, the ratification document necessary to stand for the party and which can only be signed by Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan.

Ms Hanafin's nomination has created a storm within Fianna Fáil after an initial decision that the party's sole candidate in the Blackrock ward would be Ógra Fianna Fáil president Kate Feeney (28).

The parliamentary party meets today and the issue is expected to be robustly debated. A number of senior party members declined to comment until they hear a report at the meeting. Others were divided over Ms Hanafin’s re-entry to politics but declined to comment publicly.

Ms Hanafin was contacted by Mr Dorgan on Wednesday following poll results which indicated the party could win two seats in the ward. She said she had to think about it because she was completing a master’s, her father was ill, it was late in the day and there was another candidate.

The former minister and TD, from 1997 until 2011, when she lost her Dún Laoghaire seat, said on Thursday she would accept the challenge on the basis that Ms Feeney was informed. The Ógra president was however only told on Friday; Ms Hanafin said the party “made a hames of that” by leaving it so late.

Ms Feeney, an accountant, has already said that the national constituencies committee, the body that has final say on candidate selection, had on Friday night confirmed her as the single party candidate and affirmed that decision to her on Saturday. The committee met on Friday to consider the issue after Ms Feeney expressed her belief that there was only one Fianna Fáil seat in the ward.

The party says it “fully expects” Ms Hanafin to withdraw but she has insisted that she was asked to stand and was given the appropriate documentation signed by the party’s general secretary on Friday.