Joan Burton has said she is proud to be leader of the Labour Party and wants to see an emphasis in Government on social as well as economic repair for the country.
The Minister for Social Protection also said she wanted to see more action on house-building.
She defeated Minister of State Alex White by 2,094 votes to 607.
Ms Burton would not be drawn on whether Mr White will be in Cabinet; she said decisions will be made next week.
Mr White told reporters that it is up to Ms Burton whether he gets a place in the Cabinet and added that it is her day.
The party's new deputy leader is also to be announced today.
There are four candidates for the deputy leadership; Ciara Conway, Alan Kelly, Seán Sherlock and Michael McCarthy.
Tallies suggest Mr Kelly nearly has sufficient support to see him elected on the first count, with Mr Sherlock, Mr McCarthy and Ms Conway's percentage totals in the mid-teens.
Mr Kelly would then automatically get a Cabinet seat and his nearest rivals will have claims for promotion.
Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Eamon Gilmore earlier wrote to Taoiseach Enda Kenny resigning the office of Tánaiste.
In the letter, Mr Gilmore said doing so would enable Mr Kenny to nominate his successor at the earliest possible time.
Ms Burton's involvement in politics stretches back four decades.
She grew up in Stoneybatter in Dublin, attended the local school and won a scholarship to study commerce at UCD.
She went on to become one of the first female chartered accountants in the country.
Her own political career got off to an unsuccessful start. She failed to win a Dáil seat in 1989, but was brought in, in the spring tide three years later.
On her first day in the Dáil, she was made a junior minister at the Department of Social Welfare.
She later went on to become a minister for overseas aid, but in the 1997 election she lost her Dublin West seat.
She returned to the Dáil in 2002 and she later became the party's deputy leader.
It was perhaps in her role as the party's finance spokesperson she made the most impact, regularly then holding the Fianna Fáil / PD government to account.
After Fine Gael and Labour joined forces in 2011, it is said she wanted the public expenditure and reform portfolio. However, she got the social protection brief and it seemed she was not initially happy.
For the past two years or so, she has managed to portray herself as a semi-autonomous Government minister, speaking out and sometimes contradicting Government policy.
There was continued speculation that she had her eyes on Labour's top job with relations between her and Eamon Gilmore seemingly strained.
The question was would she move against him.
In the end, she did not have to as after the disastrous Local and European Election results, Mr Gilmore announced he would step aside.
Now, after over 30 years in the party, she has become the party's 11th leader and their first female leader.
Keywords: labour party
No comments:
Post a Comment