A cháirde,
I want to welcome you all and thank you for all which you do for our party.
Tonight is a chance to catch up with old friends from throughout the country.
It’s also a moment to reflect on both past events and our agenda for serving the Irish people.
There is a lot to proud of and we have many important plans which are at the core of what we’re trying to achieve as a party. But it’s very important that I start by acknowledging a clear failure.
Over the last month I heard from many of you about how excited you were for us to be competing in a presidential election for the first time in 28 years. And I have also heard from you about how upset you are and how disappointed our members are about how events transpired.
I want to acknowledge that and to say how deeply sorry I am, about how things turned out.
From my first day as party leader my first and absolute priority has been to try and strengthen our party and its ability to serve the people. That will never change.
During the week we had a very long discussion at the Parliamentary Party. I want to acknowledge the constructive suggestions about making sure that we quickly learn our lessons from this and that we reflect these in how we move forward.
Clearly we need to have a new procedure for deciding when we run a candidate for President and who that candidate is to be. I for one support the idea that we move to a process which is in tune with the wider reforms which we have introduced in the past.
And tonight, we think of Jim Gavin and his family who have gone through a very traumatic time. Jim Gavin has made a very significant contribution to our country as a UN Peacekeeper, and a Public Servant and in his impactful work in the North East inner city of Dublin where he is hugely respected. This needs to be said.
On a personal level, I want to thank you all, and the many thousands of members and supporters who are not here tonight, for the incredible support you have given me, particularly during 2024 a gruelling year of three national elections.
One of the constructive points made at the Parliamentary Party meeting on Wednesday was a call for us to remember how much we achieved during a year of successes last year.
It is a great privilege to be Uachtaráin Fhianna Fáil, and to be able to travel to every corner of our country seeing the work which our members and supporters do.
Time and again Fianna Fáil has proven itself to be stronger and more connected to the people we serve than is appreciated by those who so regularly write us off.
At the start of last year we were effectively written-off as being a distant third as Fine Gael and Sinn Fein competed for who would dominate Irish politics.
Yet 2024 was a year where we showed our strength and we showed that those who constantly obsess about opinion polls always miss the real story.
We doubled our number of MEPs – returning our largest delegation to the European Parliament in two decades.
We yet again returned as the largest party in local government.
I was the first leader of Fianna Fáil in 15 years to be able to appoint a party member, Michael McGrath, to serve as a member of the European Commission – returning us to a place where party members had served with such distinction in the past.
And in the General Election, we received the largest vote and were returned as the largest party in Dáil Éireann.
That result was such a shock to them that some of our opponents still can’t bring themselves to acknowledge it.
In the four years before election week last year there were 140 published opinion polls. Out of those 140 polls not one of them predicted that Fianna Fáil would come first.
We never gave up. We kept our focus on doing our work and being true to our programme for helping all of the people of our country.
We kept our faith in our tradition of service, our place in our communities and our belief that substance would prevail.
Fianna Fáil has always been defined by its members and supporters – and you came through yet again. Every one of us who had the honour to be elected through your efforts owes you our deep gratitude.
And we could never have come close to our three major electoral successes last year without the brilliant work of our staff in Headquarters and Leinster House and around the country. There should never be a doubt how much we appreciate the team which does everything from organising occasions like tonight’s, to running the Árd Fheis and the incredibly difficult logistics of raising funds and organising national elections.
To Seán Dorgan, Darragh McShea and their small but incredibly dedicated and effective staff, we all say thank you.
To David Burke, for his skill in making it all financially possible, we say thank you. And we welcome Sarah O’Connor, our new Head of Communications and Research and wish her every success in her new role.
One of the reforms I am proudest of is the introduction of a vote by the full membership of the party on a new Programme for Government before we can join a coalition government. I wanted us to always have an open and honest decision on such a fundamental matter.
This is exactly what we had after the election – and the 93% vote in favour of the new Programme for Government showed our shared will to be in government and work to move our country forward together. The spirit of the special Árd Fheis showed yet again the positive focus on this party and our determination to make a difference.
Our economy has core strengths which continue to give us many opportunities, but by any measure these are uncertain times.
There is a war on the borders of Europe. Rising extremism is threatening democracies throughout the world. The core system of free trade which has enabled the largest fall in poverty ever seen in world history is being questioned.
And at home, we face deep challenges in protecting social cohesion. Providing housing for our rising population. And in ensuring that Ireland can still have influence in Europe and the wider world.
The Budget this week had to be framed against the backdrop of international uncertainty.
It provided less than the opposition demanded and more than others advised – but it struck an important balance. And in this balance we have again shown what it is that Fianna Fáil is working to achieve in government.
Just as we have been since our founders set out the first programme for our party, we are determined to ensure that the weaker sections of our society are helped.
For older people, Fianna Fáil has ensured the four highest increases in the history of the state pension.
In the face of serious inflation, we have looked after those who have served our society so well.
Within the major increase in social protection supports we have also implemented a range of extra measures to help families and children facing poverty.
For people with special needs, we are again providing a major expansion in supports, including 1,000 more teachers and moving ahead with our core demand for therapies to be available to children where they can access them best – starting with our special schools.
And we have shown our commitment to disabled people, their families and carers with a 20% increase in the budget for disability services.
This progressive approach will continue to define our work in government.
We are determined to invest in securing the future of our economy, tackling climate change and helping people with the most basic of needs, finding a secure home.
That’s why we are implementing the most ambitious investment programme in our history, aiming to transform vital areas.
Cleaner water, sustainable and affordable energy, better public transport, new world-class research facilities and, most importantly, a major push to unblock barriers to affordable housing – these are at the core of our plans.
We know Ireland can’t just sit back and hope that things will turn out fine – we have to invest in our future and that’s what we’re doing.
And for Fianna Fáil a secure and strong place for Ireland in Europe and in the community of democratic nations remains a fundamental priority.
The generation who founded our party asserted this time and again.
In Bunreacht na hÉireann Eamon de Valera showed his visionary leadership when he set out that Ireland would be a country which believes in cooperation and the rule of law. To do so at a moment in history when the world was about to be consumed by extremism and conflict was truly remarkable.
The international spirit of our founders is why it was a Fianna Fáil government which was the first in Europe to assert the right of the Palestinian people to their own state, it is why we pushed in government to recognise a Palestinian state and why we have been acknowledged by Palestinian leaders as one of their strongest advocates.
It's important to say that because Sinn Fein and the far left constantly attack us and accuse of being complicit in the appalling attacks by the Israeli government on the people of Gaza.
It is sad that so many people here put party politics first in absolutely everything.
We all earnestly hope that a sustainable peace will be achieved. Peace which ends the slaughter, returns all of the hostages, delivers a surge in humanitarian aid – and which can deliver a secure state for the Palestinian people, living in harmony and side by side with the Israeli State.
And we will continue to be unwavering in our support for the people of Ukraine in their struggle to push back savage Russian imperialism.
The invasion, ethnic cleansing and partition of Ukraine must never be allowed to stand. In every forum, national and international, where this party participates we will always stand with the Ukrainian people.
And it was the same international spirit shown in the 1930s that later led Seán Lemass, as the last major act of our founders, to say that this is a party which believes in an Ireland which should always stand proudly as a member of what is today the European Union.
This is a testing time for the Union. There are many who want to roll back its powers or to stop it helping countries faced with urgent threats. Unfortunately these anti-EU sentiments are often found here. Of course these people always pretend that they are not anti-EU, but their demands expose the reality of their beliefs.
In the critical next few years Fianna Fáil’s position will be that we stand in solidarity with other European democracies.
We support a budget which is large enough to achieve the equally important goals of securing Europe’s food supply, investing in critical infrastructure and in helping states under threat. A new budget which protects the CAP and has new resources to expand funding in other areas is a priority.
Next year we will again hold the Presidency of the Council. There will be many intense negotiations across a full range of issues. And in everything we will bring a constructive and urgent approach to moving issues forward.
We need a strong and effective Europe and we will play our role in making sure that there is a strong and effective Europe.
And Fianna Fáil is also determined to use government to move reconciliation on this island from being empty words to being a defining element of what government does.
We are a proud republican party – our belief in unity has never changed. Division on this island has served nobody well. It gave us two states which were less diverse and less successful than if had they been together.
In the Good Friday Agreement we secured the first ever agreed blueprint for handling the constitutional future of our island.
But the Good Friday Agreement also set everyone the challenge of breaking the patterns of division which had escalated over many decades.
It set us the challenge of building real contacts between communities and between North and South.
But not enough was done.
That’s why we established the Shared Island Initiative – and it’s why the Initiative will continue to expand its work.
This is the first time in our history that there is a major programme in place not just to study every element of what we share and what we don’t – but also to invest in building permanent, deep engagement between all communities.
The Narrow Water Bridge is under construction, great work is being done on the Ulster Canal and significant investment is underway in the arts, science, research and bio-diversity which is connecting people in a pragmatic way.
From independence onwards a huge amount of effort was spent on the assumption that what was needed was a few more public meetings and speeches about how the other side needed to listen.
But maybe it was time to try something else – to not just talk about people being together but to actually do something to bring them together.
As recent research has shown, the Shared Island Initiative is exactly the sort of initiative which de Valera and Lemass talked about over many years but could not implement because of the inflexibility of others. They repeatedly reminded people that Fianna Fáil is a party founded to find new ways forward and not to remain limited to the approaches of the past.
We must never forget that.
And we must never forget the demand which they and the other men and women who fought for our independence set out in 1916 and afterwards – Irish republicanism is an inclusive ideal. An ideal which insists on the diversity of our nation. An ideal which opposes the claim that Irish identity is fixed and unchanging.
We can all see the dark forces who are trying to promote a small and rigid ideal of Irish national identity. In many places this could pose a direct threat to the sort of social cohesion which has been our greatest national asset.
We will never waver in our commitment to the diversity and inclusivity of Irish identity.
Next year we will also celebrate the 100th anniversary of our party’s first meeting.
On May 16th 1926, at 3.30 on mild Sunday afternoon, Constance Markiewicz called to order a packed meeting convened to enrol the first members of a new republican party.
Eamon de Valera spoke of the duty to focus on the future – about how service to the Irish people mattered more than anything else. The packed audience heard about a programme to build homes, create jobs, support new industries, honour Irish culture and have a proud Ireland standing amongst the free nations of the world.
A progressive party which rejects ideological extremes and is defined by a practical patriotism.
A cháirde, this remains the vision and the commitment of Fianna Fáil, the Republican Party.