None of almost 190 local authority members surveyed this week said they would support former UFC fighter Conor McGregor’s nomination for the presidency.
Of Ireland’s 949 councillors, who were surveyed by The Irish Times, 188 or 20 per cent responded. All stated they would not support a McGregor candidacy, with the exception of Sligo Fianna Fáil councillor Dónal Gilroy, who said it is too early to say how he would vote.
Councillors opposed the 36-year-old’s candidacy on a number of grounds, including his apparent ignorance of the constitutional role of the President, his increasingly far-right views and the finding of a High Court jury last November that Mr McGregor was civilly liable for the rape of a woman in a Dublin hotel in 2018.
To appear on the ballot paper, Mr McGregor will require the nomination of 20 members of the Oireachtas or four of the country’s 31 local authorities.
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While none of the survey respondents said they would support Mr McGregor, many expressed concern about local representatives coming under external pressure to back his nomination, including pressure from the Trump administration or its supporters.
Several close associates of Donald Trump have backed Mr McGregor’s plans to run for president, including billionaire Elon Musk.
Labour representative John Walsh, who sits on Fingal Council, said there is “genuine concern” about outside pressure. “Not least because the vast majority of support that I have seen for Conor McGregor comes from people outside Ireland and is led by right-wing cheerleaders in the Trump administration who have a strong online presence but are spectacularly ignorant about Ireland.”
Others doubted Mr McGregor will get on the ballot but said they fear he will use the process to air misinformation about migration or undermine the nomination process.
“I believe what we have here is a recipe for disaster and the undermining of the offices of the local authority and, even more, the office of the President,” said Mannix Flynn, an Independent on Dublin City Council.
Mr Flynn said the council’s protocol committee held a meeting this week to discuss how it should respond if Mr McGregor seeks its nomination.
He said he put forward a motion, which was accepted, that anyone seeking a nomination will have to abide by a “code of conduct” and show respect for the council and the presidency.
Independent Dublin city councillor John Lyons said, not only would he oppose Mr McGregor’s candidacy, he would campaign for other councillors to reject it.
