Gilmore vows to make Labour relevant to voters

NEW Labour leader Eamon Gilmore last night pledged to make the party relevant again as he admitted it was failing to connect with voters.

The Dún Laoghaire TD was elected unopposed to succeed Pat Rabbitte and immediately ruled out a repeat of his predecessor’s alliance with Fine Gael.

Mr Gilmore pledged to stay true to Labour’s core values while carving out a distinct identity for it on the left of Irish politics.

He said it was crucial to change people’s perception of Labour if he was to achieve his aim of taking the party’s TD tally from 20 to 30 at the next election.

“Some people think we want to abolish wealth. We don’t want to abolish wealth, we want to abolish poverty,” he told supporters as he was named leader designate in Dublin.

Mr Gilmore rose to prominence as a student leader and union official. He was first elected to the Dáil in 1989 for the Workers’ Party, and served as junior minister for the marine in the Rainbow Coalition from 1994 to 1997. Originally from Caltra, Co Galway, he said his first task was to rebuild the party’s grassroots organisation.

“To help change Ireland for the better, Labour itself has to change,” he said “We have to be more positive, telling people what we are for and not just what we oppose. And we have to bond better with our voters and our potential voters to construct a new politics for and of the new Ireland.”

Dublin West TD Joan Burton and her Limerick East colleague Jan O’Sullivan will fight it out to be Mr Gilmore’s deputy.

About 4,000 Labour members who have been fully paid up for the past two years will be eligible to vote in the deputy leadership contest. Ballot papers will be posted next week and the deadline for the vote is October 4.

Labour had a poor showing at the May election when it lost a Dáil seat and saw its share of the popular vote slump to 10.4%.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern wished Mr Gilmore well, while noting he was the fourth Labour leader he had faced as the head of Fianna Fáil. FG leader Enda Kenny said Mr Gilmore’s “commitment, integrity and energy” would serve him well in his role.