FG selects Noone to contest Dublin West with Varadkar

Senator, once based in Dublin South East, to run alongside Minister in general election

Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone has been selected to contest the Dublin West constituency for Fine Gael with Minister for Health Leo Varadkar in the general election. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times.
Fine Gael Senator Catherine Noone has been selected to contest the Dublin West constituency for Fine Gael with Minister for Health Leo Varadkar in the general election. Photograph: Brenda Fitzsimons/The Irish Times.

Minister for Health Leo Varadkar and Senator Catherine Noone have been selected to contest the Dublin West constituency for Fine Gael in the general election.

Kieran Dennison, a local party councillor for Fingal, withdrew his candidacy before the convention was put to a vote, with Mr Varadkar and Ms Noone, who was previously based in Dublin South East, selected without a vote.

Mr Varadkar told the convention at Luttrelstown Golf Club that while the theme of Fine Gael’s first term in government was “repair”, the theme for a second term should be “restore”.

“We will restore a higher standard of living for all of our citizens, and we will ensure that we build on the stable foundations of the last four years to create something that will revive our ambitions as a people and as a country,” Mr Varadkar said. “We will have a return to prosperity, but a prosperity built on real foundations, not a bubble. And prosperity measured not just in euros but in those things more valuable still.”

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He also criticised Sinn Féin, saying it "had nothing to do with 1916, and we need to make sure that they have nothing to do with Government in the Republic of Ireland in 2016 either".

Fine Gael has selected Minister for Health Leo Varadkar and Senator Catherine Noone to contest the Dublin West constituency in the general election.

Mr Varadkar and Ms Noone, who was previously based in Dublin South East, were selected without a vote after Fingal Cllr Kieran Dennison withdrew his candidacy.

Mr Varadkar told the convention that while the theme of Fine Gael’s first term in government was “repair”, the theme for a second term should be “restore”.

He criticised Sinn Féin, saying it “had nothing to do with 1916, and we need to make sure that they have nothing to do with Government in the Republic of Ireland in 2016 either”.

Mr Varadkar currently represents the constituency along with Labour leader and Tánaiste Joan Burton and Socialist Party TDs Ruth Coppinger and Joe Higgins. The former minister for finance Brian Lenihan won a seat in Dublin West in 2011 for Fianna Fáil. The byelection that followed his death was won by Labour’s Patrick Nulty. He resigned the seat in 2014 and Ms Coppinger won the subsequent byelection.

Fianna Fáil has selected Cllr Jack Chambers to contest the election in the constituency, which prompted the recent defection of Cllr David McGuinness who had contested the 2011 general election and two subsequent byelections for the party in Dublin West.

Mr Higgins has announed that he will not contest the next election.