Francie Gorman from Spink is set to contest for the position of IFA national president later this year.
He is the current South Leinster chairman and has become the first candidate to declare his intention to run. He was proposed by his local Ballinakill branch at a meeting of Laois IFA last night.
A suckler and beef farmer, he is a past chairman and secretary of Laois IFA and will attempt to replace Tipperary’s Tim Cullinan whose four-year term comes to an end this year.
Voting, which entails an exhaustive canvass of the hundreds of branches around the country, will take place at the IFA AGM in December.
A massive national lobbying group, its head office is in the Irish Farm Centre in Dublin and has 12 regional offices around the country as well as an office in Brussels.
He will need the backing of five further county executives to get his name on the ballot paper though an incredibly strong performance when he was elected as South Leinster chair means he is in a strong position.
Though a native of Spink, whom he played football with for many years, Francie lives and farms in Ballinakill with his wife Kay and young son Tom.
Laois as a county has a strong tradition of sending forward candidates for the national IFA presidency and Gorman will be looking to follow in the footsteps of the late Padraig Walsh from Durrow who was president from 2006-2010.
Henry Burns from Mountmellick was a presidential candidate in 2016 when he was defeated by Joe Healy from Galway.
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