Fianna Fáil councillor Damien Ryan told the Mayo Advertiser this week that he is giving serious consideration to putting forward his name for nomination to run for the party in the upcoming general election.
“There is a lot of speculation in the media about what will happen and who will run, but at the moment I’m giving it very serious consideration to put my name forward,” the Ballinrobe based councillor said.
Ryan, who was the director of elections for Fianna Fáil in the county in the last general election in 2007, said that he is just waiting to see what directive the party receives in the county from headquarters as to what the plan will be for the county. “I’d expect the directive to come down from headquarters some time next week and then be sent out to the delegates and give them 10 days to get their nominations in and a convention to be held 10 days after that,” he explained. “So we’re probably looking at having a convention by the end of the month.”
Mr Ryan, who polled 1,375 first preference votes in the Claremorris electoral area in the last local elections, also said that he hoped that party headquarters would run three candidates rather than two in the county. “It will be decided in Dublin how many candidates to run, but I would hope that it would be decided to run three candidates rather than two in a county the size of Mayo. The priority will be not to see the vote split up too much due to the opinion polls of late, but I’m sure come election time that you will see Fianna Fáil poll higher than the polls suggest.”
