Businessman Peter Casey, who finished second in the recent Presidential Election, has said he will run for a Dáil seat in Donegal, and maybe other constituencies as well.

Speaking on RTÉ's The Late Late Show he repeated his ambition to be Taoiseach.

He repeated that in the aftermath of his controversial comments on the Travelling community, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was not right to actively campaign against him, as he put it

"I think it's the first time in history that the Taoiseach got actually involved in actively campaigning against a candidate," he said.

"Now it's not against the constitution - he can back a candidate - but it's totally in breach of the spirit of the constitution for him to get actually actively involved and actually try and work against somebody - somebody who was democratically nominated by four county councils - and for him to do that, it's disgraceful ...he's a thundering disgrace"

The US-based businessman said he was really surprised that his comments about the Travelling community during the Presidential Election campaign had caused so much controversy.

Mr Casey was questioned by members of the Travelling community in the audience and he agreed to meet representatives at the their headquarters, Pavee Point.

He said he never set out to victimise anyone adding he was all about inclusion. Marginalising a community, he said, was wrong.

He also said he was not even aware of the granting of ethnicity to the Travelling community, which he again said was wrong.

Irish Travellers were formally recognised as an indigenous minority group on 1 March 2017.

On his political ambitions, Mr Casey said he is sincere in wanting to become Taoiseach and he said he did not believe Micheál Martin was the person to lead the Fianna Fáil party.

"I think he is not the leader that they need at the moment - if they do not make a change in their leadership what's going to happen in the next election is they will go exactly the same way as the Labour Party and Fine Gael will be in power for the next fifteen years."