GOVERNMENT CHIEF WHIP Paul Kehoe has said there is no rift within Fine Gael following the party’s poor performances in the Dublin West by-election and presidential election.
“Let me say there is no crisis within Fine Gael or within the Government,” he said in a radio interview this morning.
Today FM reports that the Fine Gael TD said there was “extreme disappointment” within the party about Gay Mitchell’s 6.4 per cent vote. However, he did not go as far as saying that the MEP was the wrong candidate to run.
Commenting on reports that some people within the party were angry at Mitchell’s decision to stay away from Dublin Castle for the formal declaration of Michael D Higgins’s presidency, Kehoe said that he believed the candidate should have been present.
“If I had been in Gay’s shoes, I would have turned up,” he said but added that it was a personal choice.
Commenting on last Thursday’s elections and referendums he said “lessons were learned” but the party will now “move on”.
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