President Mary McAleese, who launched her campaign to be re-elected yesterday, said she has the necessary energy and enthusiasm to complete another seven-year term in the country's highest office.
"I certainly feel that I have the energy to go ahead and I have the support of my family in doing that and I look forward to it. It's up to the people to decide whether 14 years isn't too long," she told journalists.
The country, she said, has not had the opportunity to have such a debate since the Constitution was adopted in 1937, though the drafters of the Constitution clearly did not see a problem with such a term of office.
Joined by her husband, Martin, during a lengthy press conference in Áras an Uachtaráin, the President said: "I certainly look forward to the next seven years. Martin and I have been very energised, I have to say, by what we have been able to do over the last seven years.
"There is never a time you can say it is done, it's dusted, we've done everything that we wanted to do. In fact I think we both feel very, very strongly that our country changed so, so much."
The next seven years will be "very exciting", she added. "I certainly didn't grow up in an Ireland that could ever have been described as wealthy, self-achieving, self-confident in the way that it can be today and we are new to all that. These are big, big new issues that are opening up. Ireland over the next seven years is going to be having a very big debate with itself about how we handle this new emerging Ireland. I would like very much to be part of that." Insisting that she had lived "very comfortably" with the constitutional restrictions on the presidency, she said: "All I can say to you is that I am very comfortable that I have stayed, that my toes have stayed, behind the constitutional line.
"I think freedom to speak about those is clearly allowed under the Constitution, but the Constitution is also very clear about where the edge is, about where you don't go. I have been comfortable to stay behind that line."
Acknowledging that others have felt restricted, Mrs McAleese said: "I have worked in many, many jobs in my life. You look at the job description. You apply for the job, you get the job and you act out the job description and you live within it.
"I've always been very comfortable with the role and never found myself frustrated to any extent at all. I have been very challenged and very tested in it in many ways, but I have never been frustrated.
"I still wake up every morning getting a buzz at the idea of being President and the privilege it is to be here. Thank goodness," she declared.
Questioned about her term's highlights, she said it had "been absolutely lovely going back to Northern Ireland", particularly as the guest of loyalist groups. "I've enjoyed that and got a buzz out of that."
Her work with loyalist groups has helped, she believed: "I sincerely hope so and I know that they have told us that we have. That is not to say that the job is done. Again we are only at the start of this."
Welcoming debate with other candidates, she said: "I don't see any problem with doing that. There is nothing wrong with that, except of course when certain subjects are raised.
"When certain subjects are raised, I am probably going to have to say, 'No, I can't talk about that, so talk among yourselves there because I can't take part in that part of a debate'. We have to nudge our way through this a little bit, but I don't see any real problem there."
Rejecting charges that she has been a "Celtic Tiger President", she defended her efforts to boost Irish exports when she has led trade missions abroad.
"We are not talking about people who are billionaires, and millionaires. We are talking about people with small to medium-sized enterprises.
"We are talking about people who started small, who have taken big risks, who are going to bed at night with worries about mortgages and bank balances.
"I feel it is my role here as being part and parcel of the team effort that tries to help them bring jobs, bring opportunity, bring prosperity and, more importantly, keep jobs and keep prosperity.
"I make no apologies whatever for trying to squeeze the best out of our very, very expensive trips abroad, to use them to the very, very best of our ability so that we get the best out of them.
"It is the first time that it has happened in the history of the presidency. I suppose that gives us an answer to some extent of the ways in which I have tried to push out what a President can do," she said.
