Fianna Fáil leader Micheal Martin has said there was no doubt his party was facing a challenging general election but he denied it was fighting for survival.
Mr Martin said he had been heartened by the "vitality" and "vibrancy" of party supporters across the country and stressed that he intended to rebuild support for Fianna Fáil
"I'm not just leader of the party for this election," he told RTÉ Radio's This Week programme. "I intend to lead the party beyond the election and lead a renewal of Fianna Fáil and intend to rebuild Fianna Fáil into a vibrant political force based on the fundamental principles that informed the party's formation grounded in unity, diversity, opportunity."
As Fianna Fáil continues to struggle in opinion polls, Mr Martin accepted there was anger about decisions taken by his party. "Very few parties in the history of the State have ever gone into an election with a €6 billion correction and adjustment that has hurt people and hit people and that is clearly affecting our popularity," he said.
He said the election should not be about swapping "one group of politicians for another" but rather about looking at the respective detailed programmes of each party.
"I've made no empty promises in this campaign which is very unusual for an election campaign," he said. "If you compare that to alternative political parties particularly Fine Gael they have hidden a lot of their policies."
Mr Martin said voting in anger was not the best approach to solving the problems facing the State.
"I don't think it's the best approach and I think what has to happen in the future is we have got to change the way we do politics but also we have to work our way through this economic crisis and it's not going to be politics as usual.
"What we're getting in this campaign is politics as usual. People are making promises and commitments and hostages to fortune that they will regret after the election and I'm not going to do that."
Mr Martin said the "most fundamental error" made by Fianna Fáil in government was not standing out from the consensus. "I accept we in government did not stand up to that challenge and we should have challenged the prevailing consensus that there would be a soft landing and the country would be fine."
"In government we spent too much and narrowed the tax base too much in terms of the public finances. The other fundamental problem was we did set up an independent regulatory system for the banking and financial sector but an ancient problem in societies and politics is who guards the guards and clearly there was an absence of proper oversight over the regulatory system itself which still needs to be corrected."
