{"id":18884,"date":"2025-08-23T19:12:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T19:12:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/18884\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T19:12:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T19:12:07","slug":"mary-lou-mcdonald-mulls-presidential-candidacy-but-party-discussions-continue-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/18884\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary Lou McDonald mulls presidential candidacy but party discussions continue \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> leader Mary Lou McDonald<\/a> has said she is mulling a possible run at the presidency but stressed her party has yet to decide which course of action it will take in the weeks ahead. <\/p>\n

Speaking on Saturday evening she reiterated that Sinn F\u00e9in had still to choose between running its own candidate or throwing its weight behind another in November\u2019s presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, she stressed the importance of a campaign and highlighted the opportunity it presented for a \u201cwider political and societal conversation outside of the acoustic of a general election\u201d.<\/p>\n

She told reporters her party was considering \u201cessentially two options: to stand a Sinn F\u00e9in candidate or to back another candidate and we are still talking about that. It is August now and in September we will make that call.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked if she was considering a run she said she had \u201cobviously been thinking about things on a personal level but more importantly I\u2019ve been leading and involved in, and listening to the party conversation\u201d.<\/p>\n

When further pressed she laughed and said she \u201cwould like to be in the sunshine now and walking the hills of north Portugal, which I was doing last week\u201d.<\/p>\n

The election is scheduled to take place in November and Independent TD Catherine Connolly<\/a> is the only candidate who seems certain to appear on the ballot.<\/p>\n

Ms McDonald said that while she did not believe the election was front and centre in people\u2019s minds now \u2013 pointing instead to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis and the pressure on parents looking to cover back-to-school and third-level costs \u2013 the campaign would be key in the weeks ahead.<\/p>\n

She said the campaign should be about \u201cthe vision candidates have and the country we want, [and] the values we subscribe to\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sinn F\u00e9in leader Mary Lou McDonald has said she is mulling a possible run at the presidency but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,16594,5,59,47,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-18884","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-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-latest-news","18":"tag-latestnews","19":"tag-main-news","20":"tag-mainnews","21":"tag-mary-lou-mcdonald","22":"tag-news","23":"tag-presidential-election","24":"tag-sinn-fein","25":"tag-top-stories","26":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18884","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=18884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}