Ms Dana Rosemary Scallon is to press Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors to abstain in votes on her request for support for a nomination to stand in the presidential election. Martin Wall and Lorna Siggins report.
The move follows another setback in her campaign to win a nomination when at an informal meeting the 16-strong "technical coalition", which holds the balance of power on Galway County Council, decided against nominating her at its monthly meeting next Monday.
The Irish Times understands that the Dana campaign has proposed to local authority members in recent days that an abstention would allow them to retain their position of supporting or not opposing the President, Mrs McAleese, without blocking another candidate from entering the race.
It is also understood that Ms Scallon is to ask local authorities which met early in September to convene special meetings over the next 10 days to consider her nomination requests.
A spokesman for Ms Scallon said 26 local authorities were still to decide on whether to nominate a candidate.
He added that the new strategy of encouraging abstentions would allow councillors a way out of this dilemma, and a number of councillors had themselves proposed such a strategy.
The first test of the new strategy is likely to come on Friday.
The Dana campaign said it had asked Cork City Council and Limerick City Council, both of which are scheduled to meet on Friday, for their support. A number of other local authorities are due to hold their September meeting on Monday.
Some had already held their September meeting before the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, signed the order for the presidential election.
This meant that under normal circumstances they would not be meeting again until October, too late for the nominations deadline.
The spokesman for Ms Scallon said the campaign would target these local authorities to ask them to hold special meetings. Dana had not gone away and would not go away "despite the efforts of the political establishment", he said.
Galway City Council and Roscommon County Council are due to meet on Monday, but Labour, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and PD Galway city councillors have already signalled a reluctance to support Ms Scallon's nomination, while the Green, Sinn Féin and Independent councillors have supported her right to run.
Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Féin and Independent members of Galway County Council discussed the issue informally in Oranmore, Co Galway, on Monday night.
Commenting on the outcome of the closed meeting yesterday, the mayor of Co Galway, Cllr Willie Burke (Ind), said he did not hold out much hope of a formal nomination for Ms Scallon, who lives in Claregalway.
The Fine Gael whip on Galway County Council, Cllr Jarlath McDonagh, indicated that Ms Scallon's nomination would be moved by Independent members of the technical coalition in any event next Monday night.
Cllr McDonagh has already said she should be given an opportunity to run as a resident of Galway, but he would not be voting for her.