I won’t tell people who to vote for, says Martin

Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said he will be voting for Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys in the presidential election, but will not “start telling people how to vote”.

The Fianna Fáil leader was speaking to reporters during a visit to the Axa National Dairy Show at the Green Glens arena in Millstreet yesterday.

He repeated comments he made to The Echo earlier in the week, when he said he would not be urging Fianna Fáil supporters to vote for Ms Humphreys.

“As I said before, when you start telling people how to vote, they generally go in the opposite direction,” he said.

“They do not like to be directed. A person’s right to vote is a very precious thing individually, and we won’t be directing in any shape or form.”

Asked if it was credible that he was now saying he would not urge people to vote in a particular way, when he had done just that while his party’s candidate Jim Gavin — who spectacularly withdrew from the race last weekend — was still a candidate, he said: “I think it is credible.

“When you select your own candidate you obviously back your own candidate, but if you try and say to people: ‘I want you now to go to a candidate that may not have been your first choice’, [I] know from political experience it just does not work.

“It is not the correct approach. Some people will take their own personal positions and so on,” he said.

Asked who he would be voting for now there is no Fianna Fáil candidate, he said he had always been passionately pro-European and pro the European Union.

“I am pro the enterprise economy, which is why I am here today, in respect of the food and agricultural economy,” he said.

“I think, of the two candidates, the person that is closest to those perspectives... you know who that is.”

Responding to a question from RTÉ’s Paschal Sheehy asking: “Catherine Connolly?” Mr Martin replied: “No, obviously not.”

“Heather, obviously, would be closer to that orientation. It is important because the European situation was central to Ireland’s transformation over the last 50-odd years,” he said.

Two things have transformed Ireland, the Taoiseach said, education from the Donogh O’Malley years onwards, and membership of the EU.

“It is the underpinning of our economic performance — and I think Catherine [Connolly] has been quite anti-European in that regard,” he said.

Asked by The Echo if this would be the first time he ever gave a number one to a Fine Gael candidate, Mr Martin declined to answer, saying he had made his point.

“That’s the privacy of the ballot paper. We have a multi-seat proportional representation system since the start,” he said.

Rejecting the suggestion that the presidential election would serve as a referendum on the Government, he said he would not accept that premise.

“People will vote for the person that they think can serve the country best as president,” he said. “People understand the constitutional basis of the presidency, the role of the presidency, the functions of the presidency. People actually do distinguish between a presidential election and every other type of election.

“I think it is a false premise to put [to people].

“Obviously, some opposition parties are trying to do that to create certain advantages, maybe electorally or politically.

“That sentiment actually undermines the office of the president,” Mr Martin said.