Niall O'Connor reports from Cork City Count Centre

BILLY KELLEHER, WHO failed in his bid to be Fianna Fáil’s candidate for the presidency, has said the election was “disastrous” for his party and has had “a catastrophic effect”.

Kelleher, who is an MEP and former Minister of State, was speaking at the count centre in the Cork City count centre in Nemo Rangers GAA Club in Cork. 

The politician – who is from the Whites Cross, Glanmire area of the county – had competed with Jim Gavin to be the Fianna Fáil Áras hopeful. 

Gavin was given the nod by the party faithful but Kelleher says the process has exposed significant concerns about how the selection was carried out. 

“It has been disastrous from a party perspective. It has had a catastrophic effect on the morale of our people that are out there,” he said. 

Count staff told The Journal that they had come across a number of ballots which were spoiled because people had scribbled in “Billy Kelleher” and not selected any of the actual candidates.

“They want to have a candidate to go out and campaign for, they wanted to have a chance of winning the presidency.

“It’s very important from a political perspective that a party is involved in the campaign and that you’re articulating views that are relevant to Fianna Fail values and principles and we couldn’t do that,” he said. 

Kelleher said that it is now critical that his party has to “really assess how we ended up” with a failed candiature. 

He said that there was a failure to have “a proper open, transparent process” in the selection and said it should not have been a case of the political party selecting it themselves. 

He was also critical of the lack of a “real open debate … about what type of candidate they wanted and having the candidate putting forward their views on what the presidency is about”.

He said: “We didn’t do any of that, and I believe we had an internal competition to select the candidate and if we had more of a broader one, that was open and transparent.

“I think results could have been different and obviously the campaign would have been different.”

Billy Kelleher MEP very strong here in a chat with me in Cork.
Called election “disastrous” for Fianna Fáil. @thejournal_ie pic.twitter.com/Pt9dNnmXwT

— Niall O’Connor (@NiallJournal_ie) October 25, 2025

Kelleher said he would have performed better in the campaign. 

“Well, I think first and foremost you have to accept that to be involved in the campaign, you have to be able to perform, you have to be able to stand in front of a camera.

“You have to be able to articulate your views, your beliefs, your passions. I would wish that the party was involved in this campaign because I would love to have been the candidate because I wanted to talk about issues that are relevant to society and to a modern Ireland and where we’re going in the years ahead.

“Clearly that didn’t happen from, a Fianna Fail perspective and for also Fine Gael,” he added. 

Kelleher also added that the negative campaigning of Fine Gael had caused the electorate to turn away from Heather Humphreys. 

“What I take away from a Fianna Fáil perspective is that in future when we are assessing candidates, they have to go through a due diligence process, not just in terms of ethics, but also an ability to campaign as well.”

“That really is a significant issue in the modern world we live in. It is about media performance. It is about social media, it’s about podcasts.

“It’s about getting your message out there and then all the noise and clutter and social media; you have to be able to articulate in a way that people will listen to us.”