Aontú announce Dublin slate of candidates

Aontú have launched their local election campaign.

The party will be running 15 candidates across Dublin in the various council races, along with fielding a candidate for Europe.

Speaking at the launch, party leader Peadar Tóibín said that their European candidate Aislign Considine is an “extremely articulate bread-and-butter campaigner.”

“She is a women’s rights activist and she will make a great representative for Dublin in the European Union,” he said.

The party was only a few months old when it ran in the 2019 locals, but Tóibín expressed confidence in his party.

“This is Aontú’s largest council candidate offering. Aontú is fighting these elections with a far higher profile than in 2019. Our support is significantly higher than in 2019. Many of these candidates are now well known having been working in their communities solidly for the last 5 years.”

He has dubbed the party “the only party listening to the people,” noting they were the only major party to call for a No-No vote in March’s referendums, and opposing the recent Climate Change Bill.

“We opposed the censorship contained in the Hate Speech Bill while most of the opposition supported the Government. Only Aontú sought a respectful debate and common-sense response to immigration. Only Aontú sought a full public investigation with statutory powers into what happened to our older people in nursing homes during Covid.”

“We’re not just the best organised opposition to this government, we are often the only real opposition holding this government to account,” he said.

On the European front, he said that the party opposes the EU Migration Pact along with calls to establish an EU army, and will not back Ursula Von Der Leyen in a leadership vote.

“We seek to bring back into use the 3,500 empty local authority homes and the 160,000 other empty homes. We seek proper regional development to stop much of the regions falling in terms of income. We are confident as we face into the coming weeks”,  Tóibín said.