Michael McDowell rules out seeking nomination for presidential election
Former tánaiste and minister for justice
Michael McDowell
has ruled himself out as a candidate for November's presidential election.
Mr McDowell, a senator who played a leading role in the campaign against
family and care referendums
last year, has been mentioned as a possible independent candidate for several months.
He was said to have been mulling over a potential run to succeed
Michael D Higgins
after his two terms in Áras an Uachtaráin.
However, the former leader of the now-defunct Progressive Democrats has told The Irish Times he will not be seeking a nomination for the autumn election.
READ MORE
'I'm not going to run,' said the 74-year-old, adding that the upper house is the place where he can most usefully serve.
He has been a senator since 2016 in the National University of Ireland constituency, having previously been a TD for 12 years.
If Mr McDowell had chosen to run for president, he would have comfortably received the necessary 20 nominations from TDs and senators, according to colleagues, as he has a wide base of support among independent members of both Houses.
Last year, Mr McDowell established a group of legal professionals, called Lawyers for No, to campaign against the constitutional referendums on family and care.
The referendums were defeated by large majorities despite having the backing of the big political parties.
[
Migration policy is the EU's biggest weakness and Donald Trump is aiming to exploit it
Opens in new window
]
[
UK-Israel relations plunge as calls grow in Britain to recognise Palestine
Opens in new window
]
Former Fine Gael minister Heather Humphreys has also indicated she will not seek a nomination to run in the presidential election.
The Monaghan politician said she gave it serious thought after retiring from Dáil Éireann but ultimately decided against it.
Speaking on the Joe Finnegan Show on Shannonside Northern Sound, she said: 'I said I wanted to spend more time with the family and my time in public life was over. I made that decision then and it is the same [now].'
Fianna Fáil TD Seán Ó Fearghaíl, the former ceann comhairle, has also ruled himself out.
'Not in a million years, not under any circumstances,' the Kildare South deputy said about a possible run for the Áras. 'It's not me. It's not where I want to be.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
The Irish economy grew by 22% over the past year. Yes, you read that right
Ireland's economic data was always going to be a bit special at the start of this year. But Thursday's figures were mind-bending. It is impossible to overstate the extent to which we now stand out in international comparisons. And this is not just a curiosity – it matters. The economy, as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) , was 22 per cent larger in the first quarter of 2025 than one year earlier, according to the latest estimates from the Central Statistics Office . Think about it. The figures suggest that for every €1 of activity last year, there was €1.22 in 2025. Even comparing GDP in the first quarter of this year with the last quarter of 2024, there is a rise of close to 10 per cent – this is roughly the extent of growth across the euro zone over the past decade. Of course this bonkers data is not real, in the sense that it does not reflect what is happening in the underlying economy in which we all live. How could it? As has been long discussed the headline economic data is entirely distorted by the activities and tax planning of a small number of very big US tech and pharma companies. From time to time, this has created huge distortions in the figures. A decade ago, top US economist Paul Krugman famously described a 26 per cent GDP growth rate reported for the Irish economy (later revised up to over 30 per cent) as 'leprechaun' economics . At the time the figures were distorted by massive tax-driven investments by the companies concerned, including Apple, essentially a manoeuvre by the companies involved to try to keep their tax bills down as international rules changed. READ MORE Now, as one observer put it, we are seeing another 'Krugman' moment. This time the reasons are different. Big pharma companies have been rushing product over to the US to try to get drugs and key ingredients into the market before Donald Trump announces tariffs on the sector. This has led to a surge in exports, feeding into the GDP data. Many of these are manufactured here – and some are made elsewhere but organised by Irish subsidiaries and so also show up in our figures. And so we see a massive surge in Irish GDP in the first quarter of this year. A big – temporary – decline in pharma exports in GDP will follow at some stage, as the firms involved must now have massive stocks jammed into every free warehouse in the US. Much will depend on how the tariffs story plays out. [ Welcome (back) to the era of Leprechaun economics Opens in new window ] Whether Krugman renews his leprechaun offensive or not, let's not pretend this won't be noticed. Ireland's GDP data is not some irrelevance in a quirky economic corner. The amounts of money being moved through Ireland are now enormous. Daniel Kral, chief economist at Oxford Economics , calculates that Ireland – which accounts for 4 per cent of the euro zone economy – accounted for half its total growth over the past year. Analysts have taken to looking at the figures 'excluding Ireland'. How do we pull back from all of this to judge the underlying health of the economy? Total demand in the domestic economy – adjusted by the CSO to remove the multinational factors - rose just 1 per cent over the year. But we need to look under the surface here, too. Consumer spending, a good measure of how we feel, was up by a decent 2.5 per cent. But the overall figure was dragged down by a fall in business investment, presumably reflecting the international uncertainty. So households continued to spend in the first part of the year, but businesses are taking a wait-and-see approach to big capital spending. This is likely to be reflected in the jobs market as the year goes on – and here AI is also changing the game in many sectors. Consumers may get more cautious too. Uncertainty is starting to slow the economy and this is a trend we need to watch as the year goes on. The piece of data that seemed a bit out of line this week was a 30 per cent fall in corporation tax in May compared with the same month last year. This was affected by the comparison with a strong May last year – which the Department of Finance suggests was boosted by once-off factors. Two of our biggest taxpayers, Pfizer and Microsoft – pay significant amounts of tax that month. But the key early indicator for most of the big companies is June – and what happens here will give a good pointer for the year as a whole. The figures do underline one point. It is our huge reliance on the opaque affairs of four or five massive companies – and our exposure to the sectors they operate in, their own performance and complex decisions on how their tax structures are set up. Our latest bout of data exceptionalism again puts Ireland in the spotlight, when it would have been better to keep the head down. It underlines the outsize take Ireland is getting from pharma and tech activity in the EU – both contentious points in the White House. Notably, the US added Ireland to an economic watch list this week, based on the size of our trade surplus. We are very much on the radar in Washington. Our corporate tax take and manufacturing base are looked on enviously not only from the US , but from elsewhere in Europe. [ 'No long-term commitments to anything' – Ireland's economy is experiencing a silent slowdown Opens in new window ] The advance shipping of products again focuses attention on the scale of activity and tax planning in Ireland by big pharma companies. And this causes a rollercoaster of cyclical activity. But what really counts is longer-term, structural issues. Will these pharma giants decide over time – and it would take years – to relocate some of their production to the US? Will their profits and thus tax payments here be hit by Trump's policies? Or will they – or some of the tech giants – alter their corporate structures so that they pay significantly less tax here? It comes down to whether Trump's policies change the way the economic and corporate world operates fundamentally, a fair bit or not much at all. As Ireland benefits from the current system so much, the more it changes, the more risks there are for us. The coming months will tell a lot.
Irish Times
11 hours ago
- Irish Times
Children at west Dublin asylum seeker accommodation witnessed friends being ‘put in the back of a black van'
Children living at an International Protection Accommodation Service (IPAS) centre in west Dublin said 'everyone was crying' and they were prevented from saying goodbye to their three friends who were picked up by Garda immigration officers for deportation on Wednesday morning. Three siblings, Amira (14), Richard (12) and King (7), were among 35 people, including two other children, deported on a flight from Dublin to Lagos, Nigeria on Wednesday night. They had lived at their accommodation, provided by the IPAS in west Dublin since January 2022 with their mother and father and attended schools six Luas stops away. On Thursday Minister for Justice Jim O'Callaghan said returning people whose applications have been refused and who have had deportation orders issued against them is 'the foundation of any modern rules-based immigration process'. READ MORE On Friday afternoon, the children's classmates from St James's Primary School and CBS James's Street having arrived home, described what they witnessed on Wednesday morning. 'I was downstairs having breakfast,' says Kimberly (7). 'I saw five men come into the place and they go to their room. Then I saw the girl crying. They were putting their things in the van. I feel sad now.' Her mother, Pearl Chitatariso, was on her way home from work at 8am when she got a call from a friend getting Kimberly and other children ready for school. 'They were crying. They told me their friends were being deported. The children were so hurt. They said they could not say goodbye to their friends. It was very traumatising.' Farhiya Ali, a mother living with her four children in the centre, said: 'The kids were coming down for breakfast when these five men wearing cargo pants, big jackets arrived. 'They came into the third floor, stood in front of the bedroom door, took the three kids back in and told them to pack up. We heard them say: 'You are going to be deported'. As soon as the other children heard then they were all crying. It was such a horrific scene. 'The family were not given time to process what was going on. It was all in 15 minutes. They were put in the back of a black van. For my kids to witness that it was not good. The way the situation was handled was traumatising not only for the children but for all of us.' She said one of her children will not come out of his room. 'They think the gardaí is coming to get them next. To do that to children, that was real injustice.' A number of the children, gathered around in their St James's primary school uniforms on Friday, said they tried to say goodbye to Amira, Richard and King but were prevented from talking to them. 'We knew they were going to the airport,' said a girl, aged about eight. 'Everyone was crying. When we tried to say goodbye the five men said we shouldn't even talk to them. They were making them ignore us. They didn't let us talk to them.' Another girl said: 'They were very sad. The mum was crying. They were carrying their bags. It was bad. They won't let them in Europe again.' Asked how the process could have been handled differently Ms Chitatariso said: 'I believe they should have waited until the other kids have gone to school. Now it is something that they won't forget. They keep on talking about it.' Nick Henderson, chief executive of the Irish Refugee Council said: 'Deporting children as they prepare for school is shocking. This is not what Ireland stands for. 'We urge the Government to work with families in these situations, explore voluntary return more thoroughly and provide support, guidance, and sufficient time – currently just five days – for people to consider this option.' The Department of Justice has been contacted for comment.
Irish Times
12 hours ago
- Irish Times
Death In Derry - Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA's War Against The British: Strong on candour, weak on analysis
Death In Derry: Martin McGuinness and the Derry IRA's War Against The British Author : Jonathan Trigg ISBN-13 : 978-1785375477 Publisher : Merrion Press Guideline Price : €19.99 This book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the Troubles period and the history of the IRA. Jonathan Trigg has secured interviews with several former British soldiers and IRA members, many under pseudonyms. This is new material. The weaknesses in the book are that it is not strong on political analysis and that it accepts simplistic versions of key events such as the Battle of the Bogside and the Falls Road rioting of August 1969. He says, for instance, that the 1971 internment raids were not extended to loyalists because of unionist pressure. Actually, this was on legal advice that such a measure could not be used against a force that did not threaten the state – the same logic by which the Irish government refused to intern IRA members at the same time. READ MORE Trigg is happy to describe the period of violence as a war, accepting terminology favoured by the IRA themselves. He writes of IRA activists in a tone bordering on admiration, apparently as one soldier respecting others. [ A former British army officer and author on former IRA members opening up to him: 'Trust is a huge issue' Opens in new window ] That will grate with some who will prefer a more moralistic approach and will not like to read of murders being described as 'successes'. Trigg is a military historian. His strengths are in understanding military culture and warfare. It is almost endearing how he admits to occasional failings in his research. One IRA man refuses to tell him what he was jailed for and he leaves it at that, when another researcher might have gone into the newspaper archives and found out. He misses some important nuances. In a chapter about the south Derry IRA centred around Bellaghy, he attributes the reduced level of republican militancy in the area to the presence of the literary centre Seamus Heaney HomePlace, and the 'thousands of tourists wandering around with their camera phones'. Clearly he hasn't been to Bellaghy lately. However, he has secured the candour of several former Provos and soldiers, and this factor provides an understanding of their actions and their thinking that earns the book a place on the shelves of any serious future researchers or writers on the period. One amusing detail is that the British army developed a remote control camera system for monitoring suspects but had to scrap it because those suspects would hear the click and the whirr of the film winder. That wouldn't be a problem with the technology of today.
