Tóibín ‘delighted’ despite not securing 2% of first prefs

The leader of Aontú has said despite not reaching 2% of first preference votes in the General Election they are “delighted” at the support they’ve received from the electorate.

Although the party will miss out on State funding, which was just 0.1% from their grasp, Peadar Tóibín TD was positive about the party’s future.

“Obviously we’re a brand new political party, we’re not funded by the state whatsoever, we were locked out of most of the media debates, and yet we managed against all the odds to actually build a political party…” he told The Irish Catholic.

Although Mr Tóibín is still the only TD in his party, he explained they are building up support, saying: “We have really good results down in the likes of Cavan, Monaghan, in Cork North-West, in Mayo, we have good foundations in other places such as Donegal and more.

“I would be very hopeful now that we’re just going to go out there and work on bread and butter issues and to build out organisation over the coming couple of years.”

Agreed
 platform

Aontú received over 50,000 votes in the General Election. As this paper was going to print Mr Tóibín said he would be seeking to form a government, saying he has “started discussions with a number of independents in order to create a technical group to negotiate for government on the basis of an agreed platform”.