INDEPENDENT TD FOR the Louth constituency Peter Fitzpatrick has announced that he won’t be running for re-election.  

The former Louth GAA football manager was first elected to the Dáil as a Fine Gael TD in the 2011 general election.

In 2018, he then resigned from Fine Gael and stated that he would run in the next election as an Independent.

Fitzpatrick had campaigned for the Eighth Amendment to be retained and in a statement in 2018 announcing his resignation from Fine Gael, he said he had “not been given the same support from Fine Gael as [he] had given them”.

Reacting to Fitzpatrick’s resignation from Fine Gael in 2018, then party leader and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said: “I know that he has been unhappy for some time and was a strong opponent of holding a referendum on the Eighth Amendment.”

Fitzpatrick went on to be re-elected as an Independent TD in the 2020 general election.

In a statement today, Fitzpatrick said his decision to not contest the next general election was “not made lightly”.

Fitzpatrick added that one of his “most important campaigns was the opposition of the legalisation of abortion in Ireland of which I felt very strongly about”.

He thanked the public of Louth and east Meath but added that “now is the right time to explore new options and opportunities”.

Fitzpatrick’s intention to not stand for re-election means three of Louth’s five current TDs will not be putting their names forward for the next general election.

He follows Fine Gael’s Fergus O’Dowd and Sinn Féin’s Imelda Munster in announcing their intention to step down ahead of the next election.