FG candidates chosen on quality - Kenny

Fine Gael party leader Enda Kenny said this week the party had chosen its candidates for the June 5 local elections based on their quality and experience. Speaking to the Westmeath Independent ahead of addressing the Young Fine Gael conference in the Sheraton Hotel in Athlone, Deputy Kenny said.... 'We"ve looked at every ward in every town and every district and what we"ve done is based our decision on the spread of the candidates, the experience of the candidates and their quality and basically as a political party, Fine Gael is trying to put forward very strong candidates.' He added that the party had had good results in the last local elections and was hoping to build on this and will continue to review its options in Athlone until polling day. 'We had good results in the last local elections, we"d like to hold all those seats and build on them where we can. On the last occasion we actually stood too many candidates in some wards and it didn"t work out the way we had intended, so we looked at Athlone town and district and made our decision based on what"s available to us and we review those right up until the last day before the election, so from that point of view every ward and district is looked at on its own as its own entity,' he said. Deputy Kenny added that Fine Gael had chosen its candidates by convention and would be encouraging its candidates to work very hard between now and polling day. 'Fine Gael does its selection by convention, in other words every member of the party is entitled to a vote. Fianna Fáil has abandoned that in favour of doing particular interviews. There doesn"t seem to be a great deal of activity on the ground from Fianna Fáil, for obvious political reasons. So we will encourage all our candidates to work really hard between now and June 5 in order for us to get the best result. Obviously the people decide at the end of the day, it"s their choice,' he said. Speaking about the fact that many multinational companies were leaving Ireland in favour of other countries, Deputy Kenny said the Government was not doing enough to stop this trend. 'They"re not doing enough. Obviously we have a policy here of a very strong industrial authority going out abroad to encourage people to invest here in Ireland. We have a number of advantages; we have young people who are well educated with a degree and the capacity to adapt to any skills, we have the 12.5% rate of tax and by and large we"re reasonably well equipped with infrastructure, although that could be better in lots of areas,' he said. He added that if the Government did not reduce the cost factors, such as transport and communications, for industry in Ireland, he would be concerned for international customers, particularly those from the States. Asked whether his party was confident to lead the country, he replied: 'Yes it is, I"m quite prepared to lead Fine Gael and the next Government through this vacuum. This is about the state of our country, it"s about a position we"ve never been in before. We"ve been lead up a cul de sac of economic ruin by a Government that had no mandate and that has no mandate, that has been unable to govern and unable to rule and the evidence coming out from banking reports only yesterday (Friday) typifies that. All across the country there is no confidence in people now, that confidence has got to be restored. Somebody needs a mandate from the people to deal with this crisis in a fair, caring, tough and disciplined fashion and I and the Fine Gael party are prepared to do that.'