LABOUR WILL be running a candidate for the presidency when the office becomes vacant next year, party leader Eamon Gilmore told a news conference in Dublin yesterday.
“We will, yes,” Mr Gilmore said, when asked if the party would put a candidate forward to succeed President Mary McAleese, whose second seven-year term expires in 2011. “We will select a candidate, we have discussed it at our executive.”
“It’s not something we will be dealing with until probably the turn of the year and we haven’t started considering who would be the candidate yet, but, yes, it is our intention to contest the presidential election,” he said.
He declined to be drawn on speculation that Galway West TD Michael D Higgins would be nominated: “We haven’t started the process of selection yet.” Outlining the party’s thinking, he said: “It’s the head of state. In most countries, political parties nominate candidates to contest the position of head of state, that’s what we intend to do.”
Asked if the party would be running a candidate for the proposed new office of directly-elected Mayor of Dublin, he said: “We will, yes; if there is an election.”
Mr Gilmore was briefing journalists on the party’s forthcoming national conference which takes place this weekend at the Bailey Allen Hall in the National University of Ireland, Galway.
Motions tabled include the issue of reforming or abolishing Seanad Éireann. Asked for his own position, Mr Gilmore said: “I will be addressing the issue of institutional reform in my conference speech and I don’t want to pre-empt that.”
Asked if he still stood over his accusation of “economic treason” levelled at Taoiseach Brian Cowen, Mr Gilmore said: “I stand over what I said in the Dáil.”
Mr Gilmore refused to be drawn into the trade union debate over the Croke Park agreement on public service pay and conditions.
“I’m not surprised at what is happening and indeed, last December, I predicted that, if you collapse the talks in the way that that was done and you then follow that up by unilaterally cutting the pay of the people whose talks you have collapsed, it is very difficult to come back, a couple of months later and try and secure an agreement as if nothing had happened.”
Pressed about his own position, he said: “I do not think that leaders of political parties, including the Labour Party, should become directly involved in what is now a matter of ballot and decision for the people who are employed and members of trade unions.” Mr Gilmore said an attendance of 1,000 delegates was expected in Galway.
The Friday evening session features motions on the public finances, the health service and institutional and legal reform.
Saturday sessions focus on the arts, social protection, education, banking reform and regulation, job creation and the economy, agriculture, communications, and environmental issues. SDLP leader Margaret Ritchie will be a guest speaker and at 8.30pm Mr Gilmore will deliver the leader’s address, which will be broadcast on RTÉ radio and television.