FINE GAEL IS “very worried” about the momentum behind Catherine Connolly’s campaign, the left-wing independent candidate has claimed.

Connolly made that assessment while speaking briefly to reporters as she campaigned at a shopping centre in Navan, Co Meath.

She said: “I think they’re very worried that this movement is gaining momentum with every day, every minute, every hour.

“That’s been the response since I went out in July, it has just gained in intensity.

“The people of Ireland will decide and that’s what is so special about this election.”

Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys criticised Connolly for “insulting” Ireland’s allies, in a reference to previous comments from her opponent where she said “cannot trust” US, the UK or France.

Humphreys said: “My views are that I am pro-European, and I certainly won’t insult France, the UK or indeed the US.

“It is important that they are our allies and I’m not going to insult them and I won’t let this country down on the world stage.”

Connolly has said her comments referred to the response of those countries to “genocide in Gaza”.

Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Connolly said that “climate change and the destruction of the natural environment represent the defining social and moral challenges of our time”.

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She said that the government has failed to give the climate and environmental emergency the sustained attention, focus, and action it deserves.

She said that as President, she would make climate action and the protection of Ireland’s natural heritage a central theme of her presidency.

Humphreys took her campaign to the border county of Cavan on Wednesday.

Speaking at her old school, St Aidan’s Comprehensive, she proposed a presidential initiative which would see the Defence Forces being involved in the delivery of national flags to every school.

“As a Presbyterian, and a proud Irish republican, I feel strongly that our flag symbolises the spirit of inclusion, and the aspiration for unity between people of different traditions on this island.”