PARTY LINKS:THE INDEPENDENT presidential candidate Seán Gallagher gave serious consideration as late as last December to becoming a Fianna Fáil candidate in the last general election.
Mr Gallagher was approached by Fianna Fáil late last year to see if he would be interested in becoming a candidate for the party in the five-seater Co Louth constituency following the announcement by former minister for justice Dermot Ahern that he would not be seeking re-election.
In early December 2010, Mr Gallagher, who lives outside Dundalk, was quoted in a number of newspapers, including the Dundalk Argus, the Drogheda Independent and the Sunday Tribune as saying he was reflecting on the offering.
“I am considering it,” he told the Sunday Tribune on December 12th, 2010. In the event, Mr Gallagher decided later that month that he was not interested. He said he had been “honoured” to be invited but believed his attentions needed to lie elsewhere.
Mr Gallagher’s connections with the party have come under intense scrutiny over the past few days, amid claims from rivals that he has downplayed his association.
The Cavan-born businessman joined the party as a teenager and later served as a full-time constituency organiser for then minister for health Ruairi O’Hanlon and was also Louth TD Seamus Kirk’s director of elections in 2007.
He became a member of the party’s ard chomhairle (national executive) in 2009 but only attended two meetings, one in March and the other in December. He joined primarily to raise one issue, he said, which was the non-payment of sub-contractors by developers.
According to his spokesman, Mr Gallagher did not attend any meetings of the executive in 2010. The spokesman said Mr Gallagher told Fianna Fáil general secretary Seán Dorgan in September 2010 that he had stood down. He formally wrote to the party in January this year saying he was resigning. The spokesman said that though his resignation was effective from last September, Mr Gallagher had thought it better to formally put it in writing.
The spokesman said that he formally resigned his membership of Fianna Fáil at an earlier juncture, at the annual general meeting of his local cumann in Ravensdale, Co Louth, in March 2010.
Notwithstanding his resignation, Mr Gallagher appeared on platforms in support of Fianna Fáil candidates and the new leader of the party Micheál Martin during the general election campaign. He launched the campaign of Mayo TD Dara Calleary in Ballina and also appeared at campaign rallies for Donegal North East TD Charlie McConalogue and for the former TD Margaret Conlon in Co Monaghan. He also made an appearance with Mr Martin on the campaign trail.
