Outgoing Dublin Lord Mayor, Mr Royston Brady, has said he has not made a decision on whether he will continue in politics after his defeat as a Fianna Fáil candidate in the European Parliament elections.
Mr Brady, who polled less then half a quota, has been a full-time politician since he was elected to Dublin City Council in 1999. He did not stand in the local elections this time round.
In an interview on 2FM with Gerry Ryan, Mr Brady said he was taking a couple of weeks off with his wife, Michelle. "Then I'll make a decision after that."
Mr Brady said he was not devastated by his election failure. "If it's as bad as it gets, then life won't be that bad as such. You move on from it. I had a great team behind me. They worked extremely hard and put 110 per cent into it."
He also said he knew his campaign was in difficulty a week before polling day, and that it had been damaged by a number of newspaper articles.
"There was a series of events and I couldn't recover from them." These included a story in which he was accused of using the Dublin-Monaghan bombing for electioneering purposes after he claimed his late father, a taxi-driver, had been kidnapped by loyalist gunmen the night before the bombings.
He denied it was a ploy and reiterated his claim that he had not mentioned the issue during his election campaign.
"It was mentioned a long time back, but it just seemed to be manufactured, you know, the week of an election, and I couldn't respond."
He also denied he wrote his name with a biro on a desk in a radio studio, as newspapers had reported,
He said he also aware the campaign was going to be difficult. "I took on the nomination in February. I knew it was going to be tough, I went into it open-minded."