{"id":63000,"date":"2025-09-14T05:59:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T05:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63000\/"},"modified":"2025-09-14T05:59:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T05:59:12","slug":"aontu-think-in-to-consider-endorsement-of-maria-steen-for-presidential-bid-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/63000\/","title":{"rendered":"Aont\u00fa think-in to consider endorsement of Maria Steen for presidential bid \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aont\u00fa<\/a> leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/a> believes Oireachtas members are \u201cgetting too stressed about the strategy\u201d behind nominating conservative campaigner Maria Steen<\/a> for the presidential election and hopes the situation will soon be resolved.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that people need to be strong and just make a decision one way or the other,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, there are 10 people who say they are willing to give a nomination<\/a>. There are also four who are willing to give a nomination if she gets to a certain level.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople shouldn\u2019t get too stressed about the decision. It\u2019s a simple decision. You empower another individual on the ballot. You give people a choice in a democratic election, so just go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn was speaking ahead of his party\u2019s pre-D\u00e1il think-in in Co Kildare on Saturday. Asked if Aont\u00fa will endorse Ms Steen if she receives enough signatures to run, he said the issue will be discussed later today.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe haven\u2019t officially decided as an ardchomhairle yet that we will officially endorse or campaign on behalf of Maria,\u201d he said. \u201cThe only decision we\u2019ve made as an ardchomhairle is that we would facilitate her selection. We have an ardchomhairle meeting today and I believe that\u2019s going to be discussed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The State\u2019s treatment of children is the headline issue of the think-in, which Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn said includes the right to life. It is an issue that links his party to Ms Steen, who is a member of Catholic advocacy group the Iona Institute and an opponent of the repealing of the Eighth Amendment.<\/p>\n

Mr T\u00f3ib\u00edn called for a reform of the threshold needed to achieve a nomination for the presidential election in Ireland. <\/p>\n

He acknowledged there needs to be \u201csome level of filtration in terms of candidates getting on to that ballot\u201d but described the current system as unjust and disproportionately favouring Fianna F\u00e1il and Fine Gael.<\/p>\n

He was also critical of the Government for \u201cpushing us towards a European defence union\u201d, amid discussion around the removal of the \u2018triple lock\u2019, which governs Irish military deployments. Aont\u00fa believes another referendum should be held if plans for its abolition go ahead.<\/p>\n

The triple lock mechanism must be used before Irish troops can be deployed on overseas peacekeeping missions. It guarantees that no more than 12 Irish soldiers can be sent into battle zones without the permission of the government, D\u00e1il \u00c9ireann and the United Nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aont\u00fa leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn believes Oireachtas members are \u201cgetting too stressed about the strategy\u201d behind nominating conservative campaigner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[49,9,10,44602,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,30253,5,50,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-63000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-aontu","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-eighth-amendment","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-featured-news","14":"tag-featurednews","15":"tag-headlines","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-latestnews","20":"tag-main-news","21":"tag-mainnews","22":"tag-maria-steen","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-peadar-toibin","25":"tag-presidential-election","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63000","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=63000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/63001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}