'Bad practice' to exclude Sinn Féin from government

It is "bad practice" for Fianna Fáil to exclude Sinn Féin from potential government formation, Mary Lou McDonald has said.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are due to meet this week to negotiate forming the next Irish government.

This potential coalition government would require support from others to exceed the required majority.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin has already met a number of independent Teachtaí Dála (TDs) in order to gauge their support.

Fianna Fáil, who have returned with the most seats after Friday's election with 48 TDs, have already ruled out any potential government with Sinn Féin.

McDonald said the Fianna Fáil leader is excluding hundreds of thousands of voters adding that she will call Martin in the coming days.

"I think it is bad practice for Micheál Martin to completely disregard Sinn Féin, given the scale of the mandate that we have, I think that's wrong," she said.

"It's no skin off any of our noses, I can assure you, but for the hundreds of thousands of people who vote for this party, who support this party, who want this party to get to work for them and to make a change in their lives, Micheál Martin's position lands very, very badly with all of those people, and he should be aware of that."

Sinn Féin is to meet the Social Democrats and the Labour Party in the coming days.

However, these groups do not have enough TDs to form a government.

McDonald said it would be wrong to assume that it is automatically a five-year term of government and the groups will discuss a number of issues including alternative government.

"I can do what we can do within the mandate that we have. We want to assess where things are at," she said.

Fine Gael leader Simon Harris has appointed Justice Minister Helen McEntee to be chief negotiator in the upcoming talks and said his party is open to speaking with independents.

Harris would not be drawn on ministerial positions in a new coalition government.

"I think many people went out in the in the general election last week, and many people voted for a scenario where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil would try to provide this country with stable government, with others," he said.

"We need to approach this from a point of mutual respect, from a point of grounding those discussions in policy, in deliverables, in reflecting what we heard from people across the country."