{"id":9233,"date":"2025-08-19T11:30:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T11:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/9233\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T11:30:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T11:30:07","slug":"fergus-finlay-is-very-disappointed-labour-is-backing-catherine-connolly-for-presidency-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/9233\/","title":{"rendered":"Fergus Finlay is \u2018very disappointed\u2019 Labour is backing Catherine Connolly for presidency \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labour Party<\/a> grandee Fergus Finlay<\/a> asked Ivana Bacik<\/a> in January if he could run for President<\/a> for the party.<\/p>\n

Mr Finlay, who had also sought the party\u2019s nomination for the 2011 contest and considered a run in 2018, said he was \u201cvery disappointed\u201d to see Labour supporting Catherine Connolly. <\/p>\n

The former head of Mary Robinson\u2019s historic 1990 campaign said he did not know what Ms Connolly had done to \u201cdeserve\u201d the Labour Party\u2019s support. <\/p>\n

Speaking on RT\u00c9\u2019s Behind The Story podcast this week, Mr Finlay revealed he had approached party leader Ms Bacik in January indicating he was open to running for President. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to say that Labour should contest, must contest, must do everything we possibly can to contest, recognising all the difficulties that we don\u2019t have 20 Oireachtas votes sewn up there. But there were a lot of Oireachtas votes in play at that time,\u201d Mr Finlay said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere was no other left-wing candidate in the field at that time \u2013 I wanted to say that Labour should contest, and I wanted to be considered as a candidate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Finlay, who added he felt no \u201centitlement to anything\u201d, said it quickly became clear to him that his proposal was \u201cgoing nowhere\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think [Ms Bacik] felt that this was not a winnable situation for Labour. Maybe she felt it wasn\u2019t winnable for Labour with me. Maybe she felt that I was a burned-out waste of space! I have no idea. She\u2019s far too polite ever to say anything like that, but it became clear to me very quickly that it was going nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Finlay had lost out on the Labour Party\u2019s nomination in 2010, ahead of Michael D Higgins winning his first term. Mr Finlay would also later reveal he had also considered putting himself forward in 2018, before it became clear to him that President Higgins would seek a second term. <\/p>\n

Mr Finlay said he believed in the role of the President to \u201cget the best out of people\u201d, and that if he had a criticism of President Higgins it was that \u201che didn\u2019t do enough of that\u201d, particularly in terms of national morale during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Mr Finlay said he was \u201cvery disappointed\u201d that Labour had decided to row in behind Independent left-wing candidate Ms Connolly. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of stuff I don\u2019t agree with Catherine Connolly about, there\u2019s a lot of stuff I admire her for. But Catherine Connolly left the Labour Party because we wouldn\u2019t give her a nomination to run alongside Michael D Higgins, and she has never had a good word to say about the Labour Party from that moment on,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Mr Finlay said it would have been a \u201ccrazy, suicidal decision\u201d to give Ms Connolly a nomination, which would have meant there was \u201cno chance of anybody winning that seat\u201d. He said Ms Connolly \u201ccouldn\u2019t bring herself to accept that\u201d, and she \u201chas never had a good word to say about the Labour Party since\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd now we\u2019re backing her. And I have no problem with members of the Labour Party going out and voting for Catherine Connolly, none in the wide, Earthly world. But I don\u2019t know what she\u2019s done to deserve our support, to be absolutely honest with you.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour Party grandee Fergus Finlay asked Ivana Bacik in January if he could run for President for the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[9,10,18,13,14,9169,6,19,17,9170,9171,11,12,15,16,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-9233","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-fergus-finlay","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-ivana-bacik","18":"tag-labour-party","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-presidential-election","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\/9233","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=9233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}