FORMER JUNIOR MINISTER Seán Haughey has said he will decide in the coming weeks whether he will contest the next general election in the wake of his shock failure to make the Fianna Fáil ticket in Dublin Bay North.
The son of former taoiseach Charlie Haughey could yet be added to the party ticket in the five-seat constituency but speculation continues that he could run as an independent.
Haughey told the Northside People that he would expect that Fianna Fáil “would like to add me to the ticket” and claimed internal research he’d been shown indicated he was the only candidate who could win a seat for Fianna Fáil at this time.
The current Dublin city councillor lost out to Deidre Heney in a tight selection convention last week with just a handful of votes between the two Clontarf-based councillors. He had been tipped to win the nomination.
“It was on this basis that I decided to contest the selection convention. I responded positively to a direct request from the party to run,” Haughey told the paper.
“I will have to decide in the next few weeks if I now want to contest the general election given the outcome of the selection convention
I think I could have taken a seat as I am well known across the whole of the constituency and have previously represented large parts of it as a TD and city councillor.
Speaking at Leinster House today, Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin congratulated Heney on her nomination.
He said that the addition of Haughey would be a matter for Fianna Fáil’s national constituencies committee.
“[They] review all constituencies and makes [their] decision and that’s a matter for them to decide if they’re going to decide anything in future,” he said today.
Asked if he believed Haughey could run as an independent, Martin joked that having watched last night’s Independents’ Day programme on RTÉ One he does not believe such a prospect would “entice too many”.
Intriguingly, Haughey tweeted this after last night’s programme:
His Twitter bio has, for several months, referred to his “strong independent streak”:
While his website, seanhaughey.ie, makes very little references to his affiliation with the party:
Haughey could not be reached for comment today.
He told the Northside People earlier this week that he wasn’t too disappointed by his defeat, and added:
I take political victories and defeats in my stride and will get over this quite quickly. Life is too short to worry about things like this.
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