The former TD has told RTÉ’s Today with Claire Byrne that she will not be running in the upcoming Dublin Bay South by-election.
Kate O’Connell has said it would be “impossible” for her to run in the upcoming by-election to replace Eoghan Murphy because “preparations have been made for a long time” by Fine Gael chiefs to prevent her winning a selection convention.
O’Connell, who lost her seat in Dublin Bay South at the last election, says she is “not the desired candidate” and that her relationship with party leader Leo Varadkar “never recovered” after she backed Simon Coveney in a Fine Gael leadership race.
Despite this, she claimed to have “no problem” with the Tánaiste, saying she “can’t lay it (the blame) all at his door but I can at a faction of the party that doesn’t see me as suitable to take the seat.”
O’Connell said she would not be leaving the party because of “one person”, however.
“My family have been involved in Fine Gael for generations and I don’t think you should leave the party for one person,” she said.
Cllr James Geoghegan is now expected to win the selection convention in Dublin Bay South, but, in an apparent allusion to a feminist kickback against her rejection, O’Connell claims “it will weigh heavy on the conscience of people in the constituency” that “women have borne the burden of the last year in terms of the pandemic”.
O’Connell said she was also “disappointed” to be spurned by Fine Gael in her attempt to take a Seanad seat last year, telling RTÉ she has had “no engagement from the leadership” since.
“It would seem although we are a democratic party Fine Gael and the membership decide the reality is you really can’t be putting your name forward for a by-election in my mind unless you enjoy the full support of the party leadership,” she claimed.
“It was indicated to me from the powers within the party that I shouldn’t seek an external nomination that the party wanted me for an inside nomination, so I forfeited the opportunity for an outside nomination and the closing date passed for that.
“I then awaited an internal nomination and at the last minute I got a phone call saying I did not make the cut.
“I texted him (Leo Varadkar) and said I was on his side and I was on the party’s side and in light of the Covid pandemic and being a community pharmacist and my interest in public health. For the first time ever I made a pitch to him.
“I was very surprised at his response which was that there were commitments made but the advice was that between then and the decision being made that I should stay off the media.
“I am just laying it out this morning to show why it doesn’t appear to make sense to put my name forward and to lay out that there is no major reason why I’m not the candidate or not the supported or desired candidate – there seems to be many reasons for it.
“I am a young woman and there’s plenty of time to come back if I desire in the future. It wouldn’t be in my nature to stand aside and be silenced anyway.”
Lucinda Creighton, who lost her seat to O’Connell in 2016, said the decision not to support the former TD in the upcoming by-election “sounds far more like a lack of grassroots support” and an “apparent inability to win support from any party members of decades standing in Dublin Bay South.”