Former Communications Minister Alex White has insisted the Labour Party is no longer toxic and said candidates are being welcomed by voters with “open arms” ahead of the upcoming elections.

Mr White, who is running in the Dublin constituency for the European Parliament elections, said “doors are swinging open” and voters are telling Labour candidates they have been treated unfairly in recent year.

He said the level of public support for their local election candidates was also "palpable".

Speaking to Independent.ie’s Floating Voter podcast, Mr White said: “We are going to do better than 2014 and 2016 I believe in terms of numbers.”

“You can just see it. It’s palpable at the moment. People are just telling us this - unless they are really misrepresenting what they are going to do,” he said.

“The words Toxic and toxicity are over used in politics now. It’s a bit of a cliché but definitely it’s gone out of it in relation to this attitude to us,” he added.

However, he said the negative reaction towards Labour has been replaced with an indifference to politics in general.

“You may say it has been replaced by indifference which is not great either but there is an awful lot of indifference general towards politics and generally towards politicians which is a bit disturbing actually,” he said.

Mr White also described the protest at a Fine Gael town hall meeting Cork by a group called the Connolly Youth Movement was “nasty” and “undemocratic”.