Gerry Adams: No plans to visit Thomas 'Slab' Murphy in prison

By Elaine Loughlin, political reporter

Gerry Adams has said he stands by his comments jailed tax evader Thomas ‘Slab’ Murphy is a good Republican but does not plan to visit him in prison.

The Sinn Féin leader also said there had been “disappointments” from the election outcome and accepted the party would be returning to Opposition.

He singled out Pádraig Mac Lochlainn who he said was a major loss to the party after failing to retain his seat in Donegal.

Speaking as he arrived into the RDS count centre this afternoon the Sinn Féin leader said: “Obviously there have been some disappointments but essentially what we did is the election to get rid of the Fine Gael Labour coalition and they have been rejected.

“There is a bit of play-acting going on between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael at this time but the real issues continue, there are over 400 people on trolleys as we stand here.

“Those parties aren’t going to fix that, they aren’t going to fix the crisis and the emergency that there is in homelessness or the other inequalities.

“We sought a mandate to be in government and we have a desire to be in government.

“It doesn’t look as if we have the numbers to get into government although we are going to continue consulting with the other Right2Change candidates as their names emerge and I suppose like other parties we will be holding out won council on those issues.

“Whether in opposition or in government we will stick by our mandate continue to push the process of change which is underway.”