ENDA KENNY HAS said he has no intention of remaining in active politics until the age of 90 like the former taoiseach and president Éamon de Valera.

The Taoiseach was speaking on the day he celebrates exactly 40 years since he was first elected to the Dáil as a TD for Mayo.

The Fine Gael leader will be seeking re-election next year but said today he does not intend breaking any records.

The longest-serving TD in the history of the State is former Fianna Fáil minister Paddy Smyth. He had served for 53 years and 11 months by the time he retired at the 1977 general election.

But speaking in Dublin today Kenny said he would not go that far, telling reporters:

I have no intention of trying to emulate the achievement of the late Paddy Smyth, who served for 54 years, or indeed retire from active politics, as Eamon de Valera did, at the age of 90.

Kenny joked that he had been reminded earlier that he was elected one month before “that wonderful man” small business minister Ged Nash was born.

This later prompted Tánaiste Joan Burton to joke that Nash would be 80 by the time he reached 40 years in the Dáil.
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The trio were speaking at the launch of the government’s Enterprise 2025 strategy which aims to create an additional 221,300 jobs and put 2.18 million at work over the next five years.

This would bring the total number of people at work to its highest in the history of the State. The launch took place at the Dopatch Labs, a tech space for Enterprise Ireland-backed companies, in the CHQ Building in Dublin’s IFSC.

Of his four decades in Leinster House, Kenny said: “Four decades is, in these terms I suppose, a very long time.

“It’s a privilege, obviously, and an honour, but I give my credit to the people for having put their trust in me as one public representative over all those years.

It’s been a wonderful journey, to see the changes, the good times and the not-so-good times, to have the levers of responsibility now. Together with the Labour party in government what we want to do is secure that recovery, lock it in for the next generation.

The Fine Gael deputy said he did not know what the future holds but stated that it is his intention to go to the country “early in the spring” and return to government with Labour.

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