Cllr. Aidan Culhane        Dublin South

Delighted to report that I will be the Labour candidate in the next Dail election. I was chosen as the candidate at a selection convention in the Stillorgan Park Hotel last night. This is a huge honour, and an even bigger responsibility.

I promise a campaign the like of which we haven’t seen before in Dublin South, a campaign of imagination, innnovation, energy, and commitment, and I make that promise again tonight.

But ideas matter most. Throughout this campaign, I spoke of Labour’s values, of the need to talk about what it is we believe.

Labour values represent all that is best in humanity: that everyone benefits when we consider the good of society as a whole, that we have a responsibility to look after the weak, that decent healthcare and education is a right, that we have a right to liberty, to pursue our own path in life, but that inequality makes that impossible for many. That we are citizens who have rights – because we are citizens; that we are citizens who have a duty to contribute to society – because we are citizens. In our politics, people are not customers or clients. The state is not a business.

We need to get out and start talking about our values again, start explaining what the Labour Party is and what is stands for.

Above all, we must be positive. Dreary condemnations and ritual complaining about the government are simply not enough. Our supporters need to be persuaded we have real solutions. We have a vision and we need to communicate it forcefully..

Wherever we can go, and whatever we can do, we will go to explain why Labour can make a this country a better and fairer place to live.