FORMER EUROPEAN Parliament president Pat Cox has asked his supporters to explore the feasibility of securing a nomination for the position of President of Ireland.
Mr Cox, who claimed recently to have received many e-mails and phone calls from people urging him to become a candidate, yesterday said he had begun consultations after discussing the issue with his family.
“So I have moved along a gear, if I could put it that way. I have started now to consult with a lot of the people who were actually in touch to see what view they have about the feasibility through the various available sources of looking for a nomination,” he said.
Potential candidates for the position of president need support from 20 members of the Dáil and Seanad, or the backing of four local authorities, to secure a nomination.
“I don’t have any preferences. There are two routes to get nominations and I would have an open mind in this phase to explore any and all of the available options,” he said.
“I don’t feel at the moment in a position to make a declaration that I want to contest because I still want to explore this. I want to see if I step into that particular space. . . that I would be stepping into a space with a reasonable prospect, if the energy goes into it, of taking a nomination out of it, and that’s something not to be presumed.”
Asked if the people who had contacted him represented political parties, he said those people were few in number, although some “in politics” who met him casually “didn’t discourage the thought”. Mr Cox, a founder member and general secretary of the Progressive Democrats, said he had not been a member of a political party since 1994.
Mr Cox was speaking to The Irish Timesat Trinity College, Dublin, yesterday evening, before he launched " Leading and Managing Schools" by Helen O'Sullivan and John West-Burnham.
