Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald has refused to rule herself out as a potential candidate for this year’s presidential election.
Asked on Monday if she was ruling herself out for contesting the election, Ms McDonald replied: “We’re not ruling anything in or anything out.”
With only months to go until the election, very few would-be candidates have formally declared an interest in succeeding Michael D Higgins when his 14 years in Áras an Uachtaráin ends in November.
Sinn Féin is still considering whether or not it will work with Labour and the Social Democrats to support a left-wing unity candidate in the campaign.
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Ms McDonald confirmed on Monday that she had received an internal report based on a consultation with Sinn Féin party membership seeking their views on the contest.
The report has not yet been shared within the party but is expected to be circulated later this summer.
Ms McDonald said her party has to “do a bit more work, roll the process out, and I think over the next number of weeks, probably the end of July and into August, we will have a clearer picture of what we are doing.
“As you know, we have been in discussion with other political parties around the option of perhaps a joint candidate, supported by all of us across the left and the combined opposition. So we don’t have clarity, full clarity on this. It’s a moving picture,” she added.
Ms McDonald said updates on Sinn Féin’s “process and procedure and all the runners and riders” would follow.
“I have seen lots of people’s names mentioned. So we’re not we’re not making any comment definitively on any of them,” she said.
Ms McDonald was speaking outside the High Court on Monday ahead of the latest stage of a legal challenge taken by Kerry TD Pa Daly against the Government’s appointment of so-called “super junior” ministers who attend cabinet meetings.
His case points to article 28 of the Constitution, which limits the number of government members to 15, including the taoiseach. In facilitating more non-government ministers of State sitting at cabinet, the Government is “acting contrary” to the 15-person limit and to the “expressed wish of the people of Ireland”, he claims.
“The Constitution, in our view, is very clear. The cabinet amounts to 15 members, and we believe that the government is breaking the rules,” Ms McDonald said.
Mr Daly confirmed his case may reference comments from former taoiseach Leo Varadkar, though it is not expected that the former Fine Gael leader will be called as a witness.
Earlier this year, Mr Varadkar wrote an opinion piece for the Sunday Times where he said he had used the roles of super juniors to “get around” the rule capping the number of cabinet ministers to 15.
“We don’t have any plans to call him physically into the court at the moment,” Mr Daly said. “Some of the comments that he has made have been referenced in affidavits, but at the moment we don’t have any plans to bring him in over the next few months.”
