A gay rights activist, a former IRA commander and a Eurovision song contest winner are among a colourful line up of contenders for the Irish presidency.
David Norris, an independent senator and long-time champion of gay rights, and one-time pop star Dana Rosemary Scallon secured late on Tuesday the backing they needed from local councils to contest the October 27 vote.
The record field of seven candidates for the largely ceremonial post also includes Martin McGuinness, a former leading member of the IRA turned deputy first minister of the British province of Northern Ireland.
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They are bidding to succeed President Mary McAleese, who has served two seven-year terms.
The candidates took part in a live debate on state broadcaster RTE soon after nominations officially closed on Wednesday, with the favourite Norris saying his independent status meant he could be the "voice of the people".
"I am tempered steel, I have been through the fire, I have shown that I can cope with difficulties, and these are going to be very difficult times," Norris said, in an apparent reference to the eurozone nation's huge debt problems.
Norris - also a leading scholar of the novelist James Joyce - had abandoned his bid to become the staunchly Roman Catholic country's first gay president last month after controversy about a statutory rape case involving a former lover.
It emerged that he wrote to the Israeli authorities pleading for clemency for his former partner Ezra Yitzhak, who was accused of the statutory rape of a 15-year-old Palestinian boy in 1992.
Yitzhak pleaded guilty to the charge and was convicted in 1997.
But in a stunning turnaround, Norris re-launched his campaign earlier this month, saying it "would be the biggest comeback in Irish political history", and on Tuesday he secured the backing of the four local councils he needed.
Under Ireland's constitution, those seeking to succeed McAleese need either the backing of 20 parliamentarians or four councils to get on the ballot paper.
Scallon - better known as Dana when she won the Eurovision song contest in 1970 with the song All Kinds of Everything - said she was "just thrilled" after she also secured the necessary backing.
The former MEP, who was an unsuccessful candidate against McAleese in 1997, said during the debate that she could restore the trust in Ireland's political system because voters "know me and I know them".
McGuinness's candidacy on behalf of the republican Sinn Fein party has prompted controversy because of his former membership of the Irish Republican Army, but he insisted that he could bring both parts of Ireland together.
"In the North, we have been through the most incredible transformation. I think we have united not just the North but the whole of Ireland behind the peace process," he said on Wednesday.
An opinion poll in last weekend's Sunday Business Post put Norris in first place with 21 per cent, but warned that he might struggle to get transfer votes under Ireland's proportional representation voting system.
Second in the poll was former Labour party minister Michael D. Higgins with 18 per cent, and third was McGuinness, who has stepped aside as Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, on 16 per cent.
Behind them was MEP Gay Mitchell of Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Fine Gael party, tied on 13 per cent with independent candidate and former Special Olympics chairwoman Mary Davis.
Independent Sean Gallagher, a businessman, was on 11 per cent and Scallon was on six per cent.
Over 3.1 million will be eligible to vote on October 27, when there will also be two ballots to amend Ireland's constitution and a by-election to fill a seat left vacant by the death of former finance minister Brian Lenihan.
