The Fine Gael presidential candidate Heather Humphreys has made her strongest pitch yet to Fianna Fáil supporters to “lend” her their votes for the presidential election.
With The Irish Times/Ipsos poll showing that Ms Humphreys was struggling to attract the support of Fianna Fáil voters – whose own candidate has quit the race – she appealed to them on Friday to support a “centre-ground candidate”.
“I’m asking people in Fianna Fáil to please lend me their vote. I need their support as well,” she told reporters in Dublin. “They’re a centre-ground party, I’m a centre-ground candidate.”
She said she was looking for support “right across the political parties, whether it’s the Green Party, Labour Party, but especially to Fianna Fáil”.
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Election Daily: Is it all over bar the shouting for Heather Humphreys?
Earlier, in a speech focusing on the European Union, Ms Humphreys questioned her opponent Catherine Connolly’s attitude to Brexit and to the EU.
“The other candidate for president spoke the language of Nigel Farage when she accused those of us who warned of the dangers of Brexit of ‘project fear’ and concluded the British people had not been fooled,” Ms Humphreys said.
“It showed bad judgment then, and even poorer judgment now.”
Addressing party members in Dublin, she said we need a president who is “not ashamed to be European”, and who does not believe Europe has “lost its moral compass”.
Ms Humphreys said Europe is “not the enemy” but the “home of our greatest allies and friends”.
Earlier Ms Connolly had dismissed as “totally inaccurate” charges she supported Brexit.
Speaking on a visit to Kerry on Friday, Ms Connolly again defended her 2018 trip to Syria and said she did not know that a man who she was photographed with was the leader of a pro-Assad group which was responsible for killing and starvation at camp in Yarmouk, a district in the Syrian capital Damascus.
“When you go to a country like that, I have no control,” she told reporters on a canvass in Tralee.
“I have no control who is standing in front of me today. I have no control, when you visit a country like that, who comes up, who moves in and who moves out.
“That didn’t take at all from the main reason that we were there. The only reason that we were there was to educate ourselves in relation to the Palestinians.”
The Irish Times published on Friday a picture of Ms Connolly being guided around the camp by a militia leader, Saed Abd Al-Aal, linked to war crimes against Palestinian refugees.
Mr Al-Aal led a pro-Assad armed group responsible for killing and starving Palestinian refugees in the camp.
[ Catherine Connolly pictured with man linked to war crimes in SyriaOpens in new window ]
Ms Connolly also said that no one in Fine Gael had distanced themselves from comments by Ivan Yates, in which he said he would advise the party to “smear the bejaysus out of her”.
Speaking on Radio Kerry, she claimed the former Fine Gael minister encouraged the party to smear her and create fear. Mr Yates’ comments are widely regarded within Fine Gael as having caused Ms Humphreys’ campaign damage.
“However nobody in Fine Gael, or the candidate, has distanced themselves from that comment from a former Fine Gael minister,” she said.
Ms Connolly launched an Irish language initiative which he said she would make a key feature of her presidency.
After the disappointment of The Irish Times opinion poll, Fine Gael sought to turn up the heat on Ms Connolly.
On the Syria trip, as well as her engagement with Oireachtas officials about an access pass for a woman convicted of a firearms offence, Tánaiste Simon Harris said: “There’s a lot of things that the deputy is kind of considering.
“She gets asked a difficult question, she considers it – with a week left [until the election], it would be useful if her considerations could come to a conclusion.”
