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28th Oct 2018

It appears Peter Casey has jumped the gun on his Fianna Fáil comments

Alan Loughnane

Peter Casey Fianna Fail

Fianna Fáil members have distanced themselves from the Presidential candidate.

While Michael D Higgins made history on Saturday, Peter Casey stole a lot of the headlines, rightly or wrongly, due to his surprise strong polling in the election where he captured over 20% of the vote.

While on Saturday he was vague about his future plans and whether he will run for office again, but in an interview with the Sunday Independent, Casey claimed his future is with Fianna Fáil.

“I am joining Fianna Fáil,” he said.

“I intend to run in the next general election in Donegal and I am going to become a Fianna Fáil TD — with a view to becoming Taoiseach at the head of a renewed and revitalised Fianna Fáil.”

But speaking on RTÉ One’s The Week In Politics, Fianna Fáil TD Niall Collins has rubbished claims that Casey is going to join the party and run in Donegal.

“We have Charlie McConalogue and Pat The Cope Gallagher as our two sitting TDs there,” he said.

“Peter would want to realise that you can’t just rock up to political parties and think that you can get your way. That’s not how it works.”

Collins also made it clear that he wouldn’t be endorsing Casey as a member of the party.

“Personally, I wouldn’t like to see Peter Casey join Fianna Fáil,” Collins said.

But Collins isn’t the only Fianna Fáil TD to voice his opposition to Casey, as Clare TD Timmy Dooley had his say.

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