Labour aims to win more than 40 seats

LABOUR’s director of elections, Ruairí Quinn, has predicted the party is set to double its current representation in the next Dáil by winning in excess of 40 seats.

The Dublin South East TD also claimed Labour was on course for a breakthrough in many rural parts of the country.

At the party’s daily media briefing in Dublin yesterday, Mr Quinn said Labour was particularly poised to make gains in the north-west region. He pointed out that Labour traditionally only attracted 5% of the vote in Connacht/Ulster but recent polls showed the party share of the vote was now standing at 15%.

Mr Quinn tipped the party’s candidate in Mayo — former independent TD, Dr Jerry Cowley — as having a great chance of regaining the seat he lost in 2007.

He claimed Labour would make a breakthrough in the north west, where the party is running a total of 12 candidates, “in a manner we have never seen before”.

Labour is running a record number of 68 candidates in the forthcoming election — an increase of 18 on the number who stood for the party in the 2007 election.

Of the 20 outgoing TDs, 16 are standing for re-election.

As an example of its ambition, the party is also running two or more candidates in a record 23 constituencies.

Mr Quinn pointed out that Labour won 33 seats in the 1992 “Spring Tide” election with just 19% of the vote, while current polls indicate the party would attract 22-23% of first preference votes.

“On the basis of polls that have been very consistent over the last period of time, we are certainly going to exceed the figure that we got in 1992 and we hope to be in government,” said Mr Quinn.

However, he expressed caution that many people traditionally did not decide how they were going to vote until the last week of an election campaign.

Earlier yesterday, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore announced plans for a new third-level scholarship programme to bring talented young people from emerging economies to study in Ireland.

The creation of the scheme would target students from the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries who would not only have academic ability but would show they were the next generation of leaders in business, arts and politics in their home countries.

Speaking at the Dublin Web Summit, Mr Gilmore said the BRIC countries were “likely to be the economic powerhouses of tomorrow, markets for our goods and services and sources of potential inward investment.”

Mr Gilmore will later today launch Labour’s 89-page manifesto in Dublin.