{"id":147511,"date":"2025-10-27T08:50:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T08:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/147511\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T08:50:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T08:50:07","slug":"catherine-connolly-landslide-sparks-hope-for-left-wing-unity-but-soul-searching-in-ff-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/147511\/","title":{"rendered":"Catherine Connolly landslide sparks hope for left-wing unity but soul-searching in FF \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The fallout from the landslide win for Catherine Connolly<\/a> in the presidential election<\/a> began immediately this weekend.<\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader Mary Lou McDonald<\/a> said the result was a sign of what could be achieved when left-wing parties worked together \u2013 while Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> TDs demanded discussion of Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a>\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9, Ms McDonald said Ms Connolly\u2019s victory showed people how parties other than Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael<\/a> could win an election.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we come together, when we work collaboratively, when we show up for each other, we can win,\u201d she said, though she said the party would run its own candidate in the forthcoming Galway West byelection.<\/p>\n

Leaders of the other left-wing parties who supported Ms Connolly sounded similar notes during Saturday\u2019s count and after the results of the presidential election were announced at Dublin Castle.<\/p>\n

Social Democrats<\/a> leader Holly Cairns<\/a> said: \u201cChange doesn\u2019t stop here.\u201d<\/p>\n

People Before Profit<\/a> TD Paul Murphy<\/a> called for \u201ca major conference of the left to discuss the next steps of continuing and deepening left co-operation\u201d. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Momentum that boosted Catherine Connolly spells trouble for Fine Gael and Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

He said the Government must immediately drop plans to reform the triple lock governing Irish military deployment. Ms Connolly said during the campaign it was \u201cat the core of our neutrality\u201d.<\/p>\n

For Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael, however, the postmortems are likely to be bruising.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael is likely to set up a post-election review when its national executive meets soon. There is also a separate so-called Commission on the Renewal of Fine Gael, which is expected to report before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

In Fianna F\u00e1il, three TDs said the party must now discuss the leadership of Miche\u00e1l Martin in the wake of the election campaign.<\/p>\n

TDs John McGuinness<\/a>, James O\u2019Connor<\/a> and John Lahart<\/a> said yesterday they wanted the party to discuss Mr Martin\u2019s future \u2013 though all are regarded as long-time critics of the party leader.<\/p>\n

Dublin South-West TD Mr Lahart said: \u201cFianna F\u00e1il has suffered. There was a lot of hurt, embarrassment, humiliation.<\/p>\n

\u201cA modern political party can\u2019t afford those errors in judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Lahart, however, stressed his comments should not be seen as the start of a heave against the party leader.<\/p>\n

Carlow-Kilkenny TD John McGuinness said on Sunday that Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s election campaign was a \u201cshambles\u201d and said the party needed to \u201creinvent itself for the future\u201d, including a change of leader \u201cin due course\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cork East TD James O\u2019Connor said it had been \u201ca very embarrassing number of weeks for the Fianna F\u00e1il organisation\u201d and there was \u201canger\u201d that \u201cwe allowed something like this to happen\u201d as well as \u201cfury\u201d with the party leader.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo matter what is done, it\u2019s going to take a long time for Fianna F\u00e1il to recover from the actions of the last two months,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Asked if he thought the party needed to change its leader now, he said: \u201cI think everything needs to be on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

While party sources said there was some level of co-ordination between Mr Martin\u2019s internal opponents, they are not thought to be working with the approval of Minister for Justice Jim O\u2019Callaghan, considered by many to be Mr Martin\u2019s most likely successor.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Callaghan previously said he had no intention of challenging Mr Martin for the leadership, though he has acknowledged he had ambitions to lead the party some day. <\/p>\n

A Fianna F\u00e1il spokeswoman said a review of the election had been established by the parliamentary party, and the party would be making no further comment until its work has been completed.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile congratulations continued to roll in for president-elect Ms Connolly after her overwhelming victory in Friday\u2019s election. <\/p>\n

The Independent TD was elected Ireland\u2019s 10th president in a landslide result that saw her take 63.4 per cent of the vote, comfortably winning on the first count.<\/p>\n

Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys<\/a> took less than half that figure, winning 29.5 per cent of the first-preference vote.<\/p>\n

Fianna F\u00e1il candidate Jim Gavin<\/a>, who ended his campaign in early October but whose name remained on the ballot paper, took 7.2 per cent of the vote, his party\u2019s worst performance.<\/p>\n

Turnout was higher than expected at 45.8 per cent, exceeding the 43.9 per cent of the 2018 election, buoyed in part by a campaign to encourage disaffected voters to cast a spoiled ballot. Spoiled votes came in at 13 per cent \u2013 multiples of the usual level.<\/p>\n

Speaking after her election victory was formally declared at Dublin Castle, Ms Connolly said she would be a president for all: those who voted for her and those who did not.<\/p>\n

She said she would \u201cspeak out when necessary\u201d, specifically mentioning Ireland\u2019s neutrality and said she would \u201craise my voice\u201d, citing her campaign promise to \u201cshape a new republic together\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The fallout from the landslide win for Catherine Connolly in the presidential election began immediately this weekend. Sinn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,4771,553,6,555,19,17,26735,19487,11,12,15,16,16594,5765,5,27171,59,47,18578,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-147511","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-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fianna-fail","15":"tag-fine-gael","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-heather-humphreys","18":"tag-ie","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-jim-ocallaghan","21":"tag-jim-gavin","22":"tag-latest-news","23":"tag-latestnews","24":"tag-main-news","25":"tag-mainnews","26":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","27":"tag-micheal-martin","28":"tag-news","29":"tag-people-before-profit-solidarity-pbps","30":"tag-presidential-election","31":"tag-sinn-fein","32":"tag-social-democrats","33":"tag-top-stories","34":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115445276629477948","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147511","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=147511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}