Donegal based Independent Presidential candidate Peter Casey has said he is going to take the weekend to consider if he will continue in the race to become Ireland’s new president.
Casey has come under sustained criticism in recent days for a series of comments about the Travelling community.
The issue came to the fore after Casey’s comments on the Irish Independent’s Floating Voter podcast earlier this week.
He said Travellers should not be recognised as an ethnic minority because they are “basically people camping in someone else’s land”, and that Travellers are “not paying their fair share of taxes in society”.
He declined to meet members of the Traveller community who were protesting at his visit to an unoccupied housing estate in Tipperary on Thursday.
In a statement, Mr Casey, who now lives in Donegal, said in light of the events of the past few days, he is taking the weekend off from the campaign to think carefully about whether to continue in the race.
