{"id":29218,"date":"2025-08-28T18:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/29218\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T18:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T18:55:07","slug":"billy-kelleher-expected-to-seek-fianna-fail-nomination-for-presidency-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/29218\/","title":{"rendered":"Billy Kelleher expected to seek Fianna F\u00e1il nomination for presidency \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fianna F\u00e1il MEP Billy Kelleher <\/a>is expected to seek his party\u2019s nomination to contest the presidential election, according to sources with knowledge of his intentions.<\/p>\n

Mr Kelleher has begun seeking the support of his colleagues in the parliamentary party, sources close to the Ireland South MEP confirmed.<\/p>\n

Taoiseach and Fianna F\u00e1il leader Miche\u00e1l Martin <\/a>is expected to set out the process for picking the Fianna F\u00e1il <\/a>candidate next week, with a parliamentary party meeting likely to happen then, sources said. However, a meeting has yet to be called.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin is likely to indicate an opening of nominations for the party\u2019s candidate next week, with a further meeting of the parliamentary party later in September to choose the nominee.<\/p>\n

In recent days, there has been intense speculation about the possibility of the former Dublin GAA football manager Jim Gavin <\/a>seeking the Fianna F\u00e1il nomination. <\/p>\n

Mr Gavin has declined to confirm or deny his interest, though senior Fianna F\u00e1il sources say there is growing expectation that he will seek the nomination.<\/p>\n

Other likely candidates include the former minister Mary Hanafin<\/a>, while a variety of other names floated in recent week, including former European Court of Human Rights judge Siofra O\u2019Leary<\/a>, Northern Irish academic Deirdre Heenan<\/a>, former minister Eamon \u00d3 Cuiv and former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, are viewed by party insiders as possible, rather than likely.<\/p>\n

The entry of Mr Kelleher, however, will pose a significant challenge to any of the potential contenders. He is a former TD, junior minister and an MEP since 2019 who is popular at all levels of the party. <\/p>\n

Earlier this week, Mr Kelleher told RT\u00c9 that he had not given any thought to the possibility of running for the presidency. Still, he said that others had contacted him, urging him to consider it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fianna F\u00e1il MEP Billy Kelleher is expected to seek his party\u2019s nomination to contest the presidential election, according…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,23300,18,13,14,4771,6,19,17,19487,11,12,15,16,5765,5,59,23299,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-29218","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-eamon-o-cuiv","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-fianna-fail","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-jim-gavin","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-micheal-martin","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-presidential-election","26":"tag-siofra-o-leary","27":"tag-top-stories","28":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29218","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=29218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}