Fine Gael will this autumn complete the selection of candidates for next year's local elections, the party has decided.
The move to select up to 1,000 candidates as early as the middle of the year comes after the party's worst general election result, last May. Candidates for the local elections in Dublin and other urban areas will be selected this summer, with the remaining candidates to be chosen before the winter.
It is thought that 39 Fine Gael politicians will be affected by the end of the dual mandate, which allowed politicians to sit in the Dáil and on local councils. Like other parties, Fine Gael will be keen to promote new candidates for existing council seats soon.
More than 400 party members met at a special delegate conference in Dublin on Saturday in an attempt to boost morale and bring to an end months of introspection after losing 23 Dáil seats. There has been some concern within the party that it had failed to stop "navel gazing" after the election, and the conference was seen as an effort to refocus the party as a political machine.
Kildare front-bench TD, Mr Phil Hogan, described the atmosphere as "workmanlike", stating that delegates were anxious to move ahead as quickly as possible with rebuilding the party.
Another front-bencher, Mr Gay Mitchell, said delegates had drawn some hope from the results of the latest Irish Times/MRBI poll which put the party's support, combined with that for Labour - 38 per cent - on a par with support for the coalition parties.
The party leader, Mr Enda Kenny, told the conference that government was a "precious obligation". Claiming that voters "didn't punish us" in the general election, he said its support collapsed because "people stopped caring". Saying he would engage in a battle against indifference for what he termed "the soul of politics", he said the party would fight "street by street, house by house, family by family".
"We are obliged to campaign. and in the name of the people of this country, we are obliged to win," he said.
Mr Kenny wanted to encourage more women to participate in the party. In addition, he wanted to build a community spirit in commuter belt towns on the outskirts of Dublin.
He added: "We must build an Ireland where we encourage enterprise and share reward. Right now, red tape and regulation are suffocating even our most entrepreneurial spirits. Our small businesses are crippled by an insurance system that both punishes them and exploits them.
"I'd say the same about housing. Fine Gael must build an Ireland where everyone has the right to a home of their own. How can the current administration dare to call itself a Government when today we have 6,000 people homeless in this country?"
