FIANNA FÁIL minister Noel Dempsey has become the latest TD to announce that he will not be seeking re-election as a deputy in the general election next year.

The Minister for Transport has announced his retirement this morning – less than a month after cabinet colleague Dermot Ahern announced he would also be stepping down from politics – according to local radio station LMFM.

The Trim native had said yesterday he was due to make an announcement “shortly” on his political future, leading many to speculate that the minister was on the verge of retiring.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen has led Fianna Fáil tributes to Dempsey’s tenure, saying Dempsey “has been a hard-working and effective Minister in the portfolios that he has held.”

Dempsey had a “great grasp for detail and an extraordinarily wide breadth of policy expertise” where he “came into his own”, Cowen said.

Party colleague Thomas Byrne, of Meath East, this morning called Dempsey “my principal mentor in politics” and wished him the best for the future.

Dempsey (57) has been a TD since 1987, and has held the Environment, Education, Communications and Transport briefs since his appointment to the cabinet in 1997.

He had been relegated to the backbenches in the previous Fianna Fáil administrations having opposed the leadership of Charles Haughey, but was made Chief Whip by then-Taoiseach Albert Reynolds in 1992.

Prior to election to the Dail, Dempsey had been a member of Meath County Council and Trim Urban District Council.

Dempsey’s constituency office in his home town of Trim was vandalised last month, when the word ‘Traitors’ was sprayed across the windows.

Controversial

His various ministerial tenures have not been without their controversy either; As environment minister, Dempsey oversaw the rollout of the ill-fated electronic voting scheme, as well as the 12p/15c levy on plastic bags.

As Minister for Education, he had drawn considerable ire for reforms in third-level funding which included proposals to reintroduce third-level tuition fees, while cutting the main state grants to third-level institutions.

His retirement means that 19 of the 163 current TDs have now declared their intentions not to run in next year’s general election, with Dempsey being the sixth Fianna Fáil deputy to step down.

The retirement would leave Johnny Brady as the only incumbent government TD in Dempsey’s Meath West constituency; the other TD in the three-seater is Fine Gael’s Damien English.

The announcement comes less than a day after fellow Fianna Fáil TD Beverley Flynn said she would also be stepping down at the next election.