THREE OUTGOING LABOUR junior ministers will contest the forthcoming Seanad election having all lost their Dáil seats in last month’s general election.
Labour confirmed this evening that junior social protection minister Kevin Humphreys and equality minister Aodhán Ó Ríordáin will be its nominees for two separate panels in the upper house.
Humphreys, who lost his seat in Dublin Bay South, beat his former Dáil colleague Joanna Tuffy, who lost her seat in Dublin Mid-West, and councillor Martin Wall, who missed out on a seat in Kildare South, to the party’s single nomination for the administrative panel.
Ó Ríordáin, who lost his seat in Dublin Bay North, beat outgoing senators Lorraine Higgins and John Kelly for the single nomination to the industrial and commercial panel.
The two ministers of state were selected following a ballot of the party’s central council and parliamentary party.
The party has also endorsed the nominations of super junior minister Ged Nash, who has been nominated by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to run for the industrial panel, and outgoing senator Denis Landy to the agriculture panel.
Ó Ríordáin, Humphreys and Nash all retain their ministerial responsibilities until a new government is formed.
An electorate of around 1,200, which includes members of the incoming Dáil, the outgoing Seanad and councillors, will decide on 43 of the 60 Seanad seats for the six sectoral different panels.
Labour’s outgoing Seanad leader Ivana Bacik is also seeking to win a seat on the University of Dublin panel whose electorate is graduates of Trinity.
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