{"id":55957,"date":"2025-09-10T21:12:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T21:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/55957\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T21:12:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T21:12:09","slug":"four-presidential-hopefuls-set-to-make-pitches-for-nomination-to-tds-and-senators-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/55957\/","title":{"rendered":"Four presidential hopefuls set to make pitches for nomination to TDs and Senators \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four presidential hopefuls including conservative campaigner Maria Steen<\/a> are expected to make pitches to a group of TDs and Senators to seek nominations to contest the presidential election<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aspiring candidates need the support of 20 Oireachtas members or four local authorities to enter the race.<\/p>\n

Eleven Oireachtas members are set to take part in a meeting on Thursday, September 10th, with a view to potentially coalescing behind one prospective candidate to generate momentum for their campaign to secure a nomination. <\/p>\n

Aont\u00fa<\/a> leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn has been lobbying for a caucus of Independent politicians to come together behind a candidate so a \u201cmore diverse range of people in Irish society\u201d can \u201chave their voices heard\u201d in the election campaign.<\/p>\n

He said the 11 TDs and Senators will hear presentations from four candidates and afterwards there would be a vote among the Oireachtas members on the basis of PR-STV (proportional representation \u2013 single transferable vote).<\/p>\n

The TDs and Senators will be asked to nominate the winner of that vote to be a presidential election candidate, though Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn said this is \u201cnot obligatory so if a person doesn\u2019t feel comfortable at that stage, that\u2019s fine\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn declined to comment on which four presidential hopefuls will be addressing the meeting.<\/p>\n

Ms Steen, a barrister who works within the home as a stay-at-home mother, is expected to be one of the candidates to address the meeting.<\/p>\n

It has previously been reported that businessman Declan Ganley<\/a>, who has yet to publicly declare an intention to run, could be a possibility. Mr Ganley did not immediately respond to attempts to contact him.<\/p>\n

Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn also would not set out which 11 Oireachtas members are involved though he and his party colleagues deputy Paul Lawless and Senator Sarah O\u2019Reilly are three of them.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From anonymity to first citizen of the land \u2013 aspiring presidential candidates plea for backing in the KingdomOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

On why he was not commenting on the identity of the candidates or Oireachtas members, he said the process of seeking to build a nominating caucus was \u201cdelicate\u201d and \u201cthese things are often better carried out outside of the spotlight of the media. It\u2019s more likely to be successful\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the purpose of the meeting was \u201cto give momentum to a particular candidate\u201d to help them either get more Oireachtas nominations or to indicate they are \u201cfront-runners\u201d as they seek nominations though local authorities. <\/p>\n

The only confirmed candidates so far are Fine Gael\u2019s Heather Humphreys, Fianna F\u00e1il\u2019s Jim Gavin and left-wing Independent TD Catherine Connolly.<\/p>\n

Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn argued that at present the presidential election was \u201ca bit flat\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said the presidential election \u201cis a brilliant opportunity for the competition of ideas and values within a society\u201d and he believed there was a need for \u201ca far more diverse range of people in Irish society to have their voices heard\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Four presidential hopefuls including conservative campaigner Maria Steen are expected to make pitches to a group of TDs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,4766,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-55957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","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-oireachtas","22":"tag-presidential-election","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55957","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=55957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}