GERRY ADAMS HAS said that Sinn Féin is look at three or four candidates who are party members and that could be put forward for the presidential election next month.
The Sinn Féin president was speaking after he gave a speech to delegates at the party’s Árd Fheis in Belfast last night in which he called for a united Ireland.
Adams also revealed that it was his view the party should support a candidate for the presidential election and he told RTÉ’s This Week today that there were “three or four” potential candidates the party was looking at, all of whom are in the party.
But he did not outright rule out supporting an external candidate.
The party’s newly-appointed national executive or Árd-comhairle will meet this week to ratify the party’s stance on the presidential election.
Adams also said that former members of the IRA could not be ruled out as possible candidates. When asked if being a former member of the IRA would rule out any possible names, Adams responded:
No it doesn’t, why would it? Éamon de Valera was formerly a member of the IRA.There are people in the executive in the north, working with unionists, working with members of the DUP and Ulster Unionist Party and they are former members of the IRA.
The IRA have left the stage, the IRA is now a matter of history.
There’s now a peaceful, democratic way. Not least because of the efforts of Sinn Féin and others to bring the conflict to an end.
What we need to do is look to the future.
Adams said there was a “sameness” about the candidates currently in the race and said that Ireland needed “a people’s president.”
He said he had ruled himself out of the race “because I’ve enough to do.”
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