Dublin Facts and the Presidential Election 2011

In Ireland, according to the Constitution of Ireland (pdf file from Government office) if you are over 35 years and an Irish citizen you can try to get nominated to become President, provided you have not been President for 14 years or 2 terms of office. There are 3 possible ways to be nominated listed in the constitution

1. Get 20 members of the Oireachtas (Houses of the Government) to nominate you.
2. Get 4 of the local councils to nominate you.
3. If you are president of the Ireland and have served 7 years or 1 term of office you can nominate yourself.

As the current president Mary McAleese is not allowed to go forward having spent the past 14 years in office so an election needs to take place.

With a deadline of 12:00 noon on September 28th as the cut off for nominations we have 7 people in the race

• Michael D Higgins a member of the Labour Party with party nomination.
• Gay Mitchell a member of Fine Gale Party with party nomination.
• Martin McGuinness a member of the Sinn Fein Party with party, plus 4 independent Parliament members nomination.
• Mary Davis independent candidate with local council nomination.
• Seán Gallagher independent candidate with local council nomination.
• Dana Rosemary Scallon independent candidate with council nomination.
• David Norris  independent candidate with local council nomination.

Dublin Facts: Figures released by the Central Statistics Office show that the population of Dublin in April of this year was 1,270,603 people of which 618,541 are male which is 33,521 less than females. This is a 7% increase on the population count of 2006. The population of Dublin has risen from 505,654 in 1926 to the current level of 1.27million having broken the 1million barrier in 1981.