A FIANNA FÁIL councillor has resigned this week, claiming that the party has “lost its way” because grassroots members are no longer at the core of the organisation.

Former Roscommon County Mayor Paddy Kilduff issued his resignation yesterday, stating that he was doing so with “great sadness, having devoted over 50 years, the whole of my adult life, to this party”.

Kilduff ended up in the media’s attention in 2016 after a recording of him making remarks about gay couples who have children was published in The Irish Sun.

In comments regarding the same-sex marriage referendum, Kilduff was heard to say: “Personally I won’t be voting for it and the reason I am not voting for it – no problem with gays and lesbians – but the problem I have is with the children.

“We have enough problems with children being adopted and they’re going back looking for their parents, they’re going to have some job when two men adopt a child.”

At the time, Kilduff refused to comment to TheJournal.ie on his comments.

In a statement about his resignation yesterday, Kilduff said that Fianna Fáil was “founded as a grassroots party where the membership defined the party ethos and controlled its destiny”.

However, he claimed that is no longer the case.

“It is now considered my view that Fianna Fáil has been taken over by a cadre of unelected yet powerful administrators who manipulate the party structures, systems and rules to suit their own agenda and ideology,” Kilduff said.

“This cadre has little or no respect for the membership of Fianna Fáil and this has been demonstrated time and time again at party conventions throughout the country.

It is my belief that any potential candidate who does not subscribe to the ideology of this cadre is going nowhere politically in Fianna Fáil and that members of the party are now little more than fodder for membership fees, selling tickets, knocking on doors and putting up posters.

In his statement, Kilduff proceeded to call on grassroots members to “re-assert their right to be heard above the offstage noise of the mandarins who have assumed control of Fianna Fáil”.

He thanked his team and those of have supported him through the years.

Kilduff will now serve as an Independent councillor on Roscommon County Council.

A spokesperson for Fianna Fáil told TheJournal.ie that the party has no comment to make in relation Kilduff’s resignation.

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