Peter Casey has confirmed his intention to run in this year’s presidential election, saying he would make use of “rarely used” powers such as pardons and refusing to dissolve the Dáil early for snap elections.
The Donegal businessman and former Dragons’ Den panellist finished in second place with 23 per cent of the vote in the 2018 presidential election, which was won by Michael D Higgins.
He also unsuccessfully ran in European and general elections since.
Mr Casey said it was “always” his intention to run again for president and will seek nominations from local authorities while planning to spend the maximum amount allowed – €750,000 – on his campaign.
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“I’ll do a lot better this time because I’ll be a lot better prepared,” he said, saying that he planned to harness social media during his campaign “to get the message out there that we need to start putting Ireland first”.
“I believe the presidency is an office that can make a real difference in terms of changing the balance of power in Ireland and Michael D has been an acceptable and good president, but no president has ever changed anything the way they can.
“We’re being bullied by the European Union. We need to have a president that can actually represent Ireland better on the world stage.
“What we need to do is transfer power away from Europe.”
Mr Casey also hopes to be an “ambassador for business” should he be elected president, while separately adding that he would use rarely used presidential powers such as pardoning.
Although the president can pardon and commute sentences, this is done by recommendation from the Government.
“I would have pardoned Enoch Burke at the very beginning because I supported his stance, but I absolutely would not pardon him now,” Mr Casey said.
He said he would refuse to dissolve any Dáil that has not completed a five-year term, a presidential power that has never been exercised.
“You’re elected for five years, get back to work and do what the people asked you to do and stop this nonsense of just trying to take advantage of opinion polls,” he said.
Touching on migration and neutrality, he described the latter as “nonsense” saying: “You cannot be neutral. We do take sides. We supported Ukraine and we didn’t support Russia.
“We need to start paying for our defence. You cannot be an independent sovereign nation if you don’t defend your borders.”
Mr Casey said he was “in favour of migration”, adding: “We need to make it easier for the good people to come into our country, and we need to make it easier to stop the bad people from coming in.”
Separately, he believes Donald Trump’s presidency will have economic consequences for Ireland “unless we play our cards right”, saying Taoiseach Micheál Martin should not “lecture Trump on Israel” during his St Patrick’s Day visit.
Although he supports some of Mr Trump’s policies, he said the US president and his vice-president, JD Vance, “completely disgraced themselves” in their exchange with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday.
“It was embarrassing, the way they treated Zelenskiy,” he said, describing it as “bullying”.
