THE LABOUR Party last night selected Kerry county councillor Arthur Spring as its general election candidate in the constituency of Kerry North-West Limerick.
Mr Spring (33), who is also a Tralee town councillor, was selected uncontested and with the endorsement of Labour’s other councillors, including Terry O’Brien, the mayor of Tralee and the party’s last candidate.
Arthur is middle of three children of Dr Arthur Spring and Patsy Browne of Listowel and a nephew of the former party leader and tánaiste Dick Spring,
He runs his own small business in Tralee and topped the poll in last year’s local elections in both councils on his first run out.
Tourism, energy, agriculture and micro business – making up the word “team” – were his priorities, he said. He was now embarking on a full-time career in politics.
He was proud of his heritage, but “I stand for my own time and my own peers in a country that is very different”.
Young people had been “savaged by the Celtic Tiger which had its origins and its ending in myth, and there was now massive personal debt”, he said.
Dick Spring is to be his director of elections. Mr Spring said the selection was made in “expectation” of a general election shortly.