{"id":107470,"date":"2025-10-07T23:42:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T23:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/107470\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:42:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T23:42:08","slug":"tenant-issue-was-raised-with-jim-gavin-in-early-september-jack-chambers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/107470\/","title":{"rendered":"Tenant issue was raised with Jim Gavin in early September \u2014 Jack Chambers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The claim of an issue with a former tenant<\/a> was raised with ex-presidential candidate Jim Gavin in early September, Jack Chambers has said.<\/p>\n

He said he would urge Mr Gavin to repay any funds still owed to his former tenant and that he had not spoken to him since Sunday.<\/p>\n

Mr Chambers, who is Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s deputy leader and director of elections for the presidential election, faced questions over the vetting process for Mr Gavin.<\/p>\n

He repeatedly said he had told the party he did not have an issue with a tenant when \u201cthat\u2019s obviously not the case\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cFacts changed for him,\u201d Mr Chambers said.<\/p>\n

Asked if the issue was first raised with Fianna F\u00e1il on September 8, the day before Mr Gavin was chosen as the party\u2019s presidential candidate, he said \u201cthe query was raised\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cJim Gavin was asked about that and he said he had no issue with a tenant, and that was consistent with his position.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he last spoke to him on Sunday and that he would urge Mr Gavin to pay the tenant back.<\/p>\n

Mr Chambers said: \u201cI obviously regret what\u2019s after happening and disappointed that\u2019s what emerged over the weekend.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone is disappointed, we wanted to run a strong national campaign and obviously what emerged has undermined that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier on Tuesday, a Fianna F\u00e1il TD said the party\u2019s parliamentarians were put under \u201cextensive pressure\u201d to back Mr Gavin by party leader Micheal Martin and deputy leader Mr Chambers.<\/p>\n

Cork East TD James O\u2019Connor said Mr Gavin \u201cshould have never found himself on the ballot paper\u201d<\/a> after the candidate spectacularly withdrew from the presidential race amid a dispute with a former tenant.<\/p>\n

Irish presidential candidates, from left, Fine Gael\u2019s Heather Humphreys and Independent Catherine Connolly, with Jim Gavin (Conor O\u2019Mearain\/PA)<\/p>\n

His decision to drop out<\/a> shook up the presidential contest and put Fianna F\u00e1il in disarray<\/a> as figures from inside and out of the party described the development as a \u201ccomplete shambles\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a statement, Mr O\u2019Connor said the party must \u201cresolutely address our mistakes and political misjudgments\u201d from the campaign, as he questioned the judgement of Mr Martin and Mr Chambers.<\/p>\n

He said many colleagues believed nominating Mr Gavin was a \u201cserious risk\u201d due to his \u201cglaring lack\u201d of political experience.<\/p>\n

He accused the leadership of making a \u201cserious miscalculation\u201d by not listening to these concerns.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Connor said: \u201cJim Gavin should have never found himself on the ballot paper.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was there due to the extensive pressure put on Fianna F\u00e1il TDs and senators by Miche\u00e1l Martin and Jack Chambers. They repeatedly phoned each member of the parliamentary party in the days before the selection convention on the 9th of September.\u201d<\/p>\n

Responding on Tuesday, Fianna F\u00e1il housing minister James Browne said: \u201cDeputy James O\u2019Connor is obviously entitled his opinion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a democratic process. Jim Gavin was duly nominated (by) the parliamentary party, so was Billy Kelleher, and Jim Gavin won that vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a democratic process, and that\u2019s exactly what was carried out within the parliamentary party. But this will be discussed at our parliamentary party tomorrow, as a democratic party ought to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked who he blames for Mr Gavin emerging as the Fianna F\u00e1il candidate, Mr Browne said his selection showed \u201cleadership\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeaders should identify prospective candidates. It is maybe stranger if the leader didn\u2019t have an opinion on who candidates should or shouldn\u2019t be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we shouldn\u2019t forget that Jim has a fantastic record in terms of his charity work, his work with the Defence Forces, managing Dublin.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe clearly made a very serious mistake here, but I think we do have to be very careful too, that the presidency shouldn\u2019t be restricted to purely elected politicians.<\/p>\n

\u201cElected politicians are a lot more robust to taking questionings and things like, there\u2019s no question about that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think the leadership showed leadership, and that\u2019s what you would expect, and that\u2019s what would happen in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Gavin was selected to run for Fianna F\u00e1il against Fine Gael choice Heather Humphreys and left-wing Independent Catherine Connolly, who has the backing of Sinn F\u00e9in, the Social Democrats and Labour.<\/p>\n

However, he withdrew late on Sunday night after being dogged by questions about claims he owed a former tenant thousands of euro for a rental arrangement that was not properly registered.<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il is due to hold a meeting of its parliamentary party on Wednesday to discuss the issues surrounding its campaign. The presidential election will be held on October 24.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The claim of an issue with a former tenant was raised with ex-presidential candidate Jim Gavin in early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":107471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,9168,635,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-107470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-latest-news","17":"tag-latestnews","18":"tag-main-news","19":"tag-mainnews","20":"tag-news","21":"tag-place-republic-of-ireland","22":"tag-president","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-top-stories","25":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}