FORMER LABOUR senator Kathleen O’Meara has pledged to bring a “new style of leadership” to the role of President if elected.
Formally announcing her bid for the Labour Party presidential nomination, Ms O’Meara, said yesterday that she was “hopeful” of securing colleagues’ support.
Ms O’Meara (51), who is head of advocacy and communications at the Irish Cancer Society, served in the Seanad for 10 years.
She said she had written to the party’s TDs, senators and executive board members two weeks ago, when the process formally opened asking to be considered as a candidate in the election which will take place in October.
“What I’ve found in the conversations I’ve been having with the voters for this particular nomination is that there is an openness within the party to hear what everybody has to say,” she said.
“The Labour Party is, of its nature, an open and democratic party . . . and I think people in the party know what I’m made of.”
Ms O’Meara joins party president and former TD Michael D Higgins and Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay in seeking the nomination, which will be decided on June 19th.
She has called for a “new proclamation” to be drawn up for the centenary of the 1916 Rising in 2016.
“This presidential election is taking place during one of the most difficult and challenging times in this nation’s history, but also at a time when many citizens are asking who we are as a nation . . . and who do we need to be to build our nation again,” she said. “I want to build a project, a national engagement . . . in Ireland, asking those questions and hearing from the people themselves about who they want us, Ireland, to be.”
The vision would be given expression in a new proclamation, she said, to be declared in 2016, the centenary of the first proclamation. While the first proclamation was ambitious and inspiring, Ms O’Meara said there were many ways in which the country had not lived up to it.
“We did not cherish all the children of the nation equally . . . and still don’t. And we have had to concede sovereignty in the face of a financial failure, in order to survive and continue to exist.”