Fianna Fáil is ready for its first electoral test since the “difficult” last General Election, the party’s environment spokesman Barry Cowen has said.

Mr Cowen said he hoped the party would regain the trust of voters and make “incremental” gains in the local and European elections.

“We’ll measure our performance at this election based on our performance in the last electoral test we had, the 2011 General Election when we achieved 17 per cent of the vote. We would hope to improve upon that,” he said.

Mr Cowen said the party’s target remained securing three seats in the European elections.

“It’s incremental success. You can’t expect over night to be back in Government, of course we don’t. We want to regain the trust of the electorate and if we regain the trust of the electorate then we have some hope of regaining the support of the electorate,” he said.

“This is our first electoral test since the last election and that was a difficult one.

He said the elections should be found on the issues that mattered to people, rather than opinion polls.

Referring to political rivals Sinn Féin: “I can give you the history of the Sinn Féin movement and it wouldn’t make happy reading. They’re a political entity and they’re entitled to go out there and seek support in whatever fashion they want.”