Taoiseach Micheál Martin will vote for Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys in the presidential election but his own party will not offer any direction to its supporters.
Mr Martin said on Friday that his personal position is that he would vote for Ms Humphreys but he would not be telling anyone else how to vote “in any shape or form”.
Senior Fianna Fáil sources confirmed there would be no attempt to swing the party behind Ms Humphreys. This stance is strongly advocated for by many TDs, though a number of senior figures have said they will support Ms Humphreys.
Mr Martin’s preference follows a torrid week for his party after it was thrown into turmoil by Jim Gavin’s shock decision to end his presidential campaign on Sunday night.
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It was confirmed on Friday night that Mr Gavin has repaid €3,300, owed for the last 16 years, to his former tenant Niall Donald. It was the revelation of the outstanding debt, after Mr Gavin had denied it, that led to his withdrawal from the campaign last weekend.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that senior Fianna Fáil figures had concluded in consultation with their candidate by last Saturday evening – 24 hours before he announced his withdrawal – that Mr Gavin’s campaign was finished.
They believed that Mr Gavin’s position became untenable after Mr Donald contacted Fianna Fáil on Saturday to contradict Mr Gavin’s denials, offering to share corroborating documents and further detail.
“We knew at that stage that the game was up. We were all sick in our stomachs,” a senior party source told The Irish Times.
Mr Gavin wanted to continue with an RTÉ debate on Sunday and needed time to discuss the matter with his family, it is understood.
Elsewhere on Friday, Ms Humphreys strongly rejected accusations of a “smear campaign” against her presidential rival Catherine Connolly.
Ms Humphreys insisted the presidential election is “a fair campaign between myself and Catherine Connolly and ultimately people will have to make up their own minds as to which of us will be the best 10th president of Ireland”.
Citing comments by the former Fine Gael minister and commentator Ivan Yates, in which he said Fine Gael should attack her, Ms Connolly said Mr Yates had “exposed without hesitation what Fine Gael are up to”.
She said her campaign was for “a different type of Ireland that will not tolerate that type of language from an ex-minister or indeed from the Fine Gael party”.
The clash comes as the campaign entered its penultimate weekend, with another radio debate scheduled between the two rival candidates on Sunday.
Ms Connolly continued campaigning in Tipperary on Friday but her campaign declined to say whether she had ever made public her work for financial institutions in repossession cases during the financial crisis.
Ms Connolly, who previously worked as a barrister, has said she worked in all kinds of cases as she was obliged to do under the profession’s rules.
She has advocated many times in the Dáil for those facing eviction, including supporting calls for a moratorium on home repossessions, but her campaign declined to say whether she had ever declared her own work for banks.
The Bar Council has said barristers must take cases offered to them under the “cab rank” rule, which ensures everyone can have legal representation, though the council’s code of conduct says that barristers may refuse to take on cases where there are “special circumstances”.
