`Wild card' Nally set to shake up presidential campaign

The newest entrant into the Presidential race says he is a "wild card" who will shake up the campaign by attracting votes from "all over the place". Mr Derek Nally, a former garda and president of Victim Support, took his place on the ballot paper when he secured the backing of four county councils yesterday, in addition to Clare which nominated him last Friday.

He won the support of Wexford, Carlow, Kildare and South Dublin county councils, with Cork, Kilkenny, Meath and Louth opposing him.

Mr Nally later said he was "thrilled, honoured and very humbled" to be a candidate. "Some people have described me as being the token man in the campaign but I'm very far from being a token man. I know I have a major uphill battle facing me, without the infrastructure of the big parties. But I think I stand an excellent chance."

Green Party MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, said his nomination was "another victory for the democratic process".

Councillors from the larger parties abstained in several of yesterday's votes, allowing Independents and the smaller parties to carry the nomination. Two Fianna Fail councillors, however, joined Independents supporting him in Wexford; while in Carlow, where Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and Labour hold all the seats, the vote was 12-2 in Nally's favour.

In Dublin South, two Progressive Democrat councillors and one from Labour joined an alliance of Independents, Democratic Left and the Green Party in giving Nally a 10-3 majority, with seven abstentions. The No votes were all from members of the Oireachtas: Fianna Fail's Mr Sean Ardagh TD and Senator Anne Ormonde, and Fine Gael's Mr Alan Shatter TD.

One Nally supporter claimed a lecture from Mr Shatter had tipped several councillors into voting for the Independent candidate. The Fine Gael TD claimed it was "perverse and bizarre" for council members to nominate him when they would not support him as a candidate.

Mr Nally addressed the meetings in Cork, Wexford, Dublin and Louth, saying he was "a man of ordinary means and sound values" with a record as a "committed innovator" in work with youth, the elderly and victims of crime.

The day began badly for him, when the Fianna Fail grouping in Cork County Council imposed the party whip to vote against him. This followed a meeting of the party councillors, who voted 9-8 against a free vote. Fine Gael allowed a free vote and some of its councillors supported Nally, but the Fianna Fail bloc was decisive in defeating his nomination.

Dana was among those who attended the meeting in Kildare, where she was seeking support in the light of doubts about the validity of earlier council votes in her favour. The council instead gave its nomination to Nally, but Dana's candidacy was confirmed by other votes yesterday in Wicklow, Galway and Donegal.

Elsewhere in the campaign yesterday, the Fianna Fail/PD candidate, Prof Mary McAleese said she wholeheartedly supported integrated and non-denominational schools, despite the views outlined by her at the New Ireland Forum in 1984.

Conducting a live question and answer session on the The Irish Times on the Web presidential site (www.irish-times.com/presidential/), she claimed it was an issue on which she was regularly misquoted.

"I support integrated schools wholeheartedly and denominational schools," she said. "I believe parents should have choice and should have freedom of choice." What she did doubt, she added, was "the value of making every school, right now, forcibly integrated".

The online Q & A session was the first of a series which the web site will conduct with all the candidates.

The Fine Gael candidate, Ms Mary Banotti, has challenged her rivals to a series of televised debates in the run-up to the election. She asked them to agree to at least two or three debates, rather than the one Late Late Show debate on October 17th.