LONDON (Reuters) – The leaders of Ireland’s three coalition parties will discuss the date of the next general election on Monday, Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said, proposing November 29 as his preferred date.
Prime Minister Harris must call the election by March but analysts have for weeks seen November as the most likely date, when voters will start to benefit from the 10.5 billion euro ($11.4 billion) budget giveaway resulting from Europe’s healthiest public finances.
“I’ll be meeting the coalition leaders on Monday. What I’ll be saying to them is that I think we need to give clarity. I’ll be saying my preference is for a November election, for November 29th,” O’Gorman was quoted as saying by local media on Friday.
Harris, whose Fine Gael party has moved ahead in opinion polls since he became its leader and premier in April, has said he wants to pass the laws giving effect to the budget measures and that an election would then be held “in due course.”
O’Gorman, whose party is the smallest of three governing groups, said he thought that date would allow the government to pass the final pieces of legislation and seek a dissolution of parliament in early November.
The most recent opinion poll put Fine Gael on 26% with its main coalition partners and fellow centre-right party Fianna Fail on 19%, level with the main opposition left wing Sinn Fein.
($1 = 0.9216 euros)
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin; editing by Sarah Young)
