During the final TV debate on RTÉ’s Prime Time, Catherine Connolly was reminded she had said US president Donald Trump had enabled genocide.
Asked what she would say to Trump if he were to visit Ireland, she replied: “If it’s just a meet and greet, then I will meet and greet. If the discussion is genocide, that’s a completely different thing.”
She said she understood her role and those who supported her understood her role would be different once she went to the Áras.
Connolly has forged a career as an outspoken left-wing politician who holds radical views. Throughout her career, she has been sceptical and suspicious of the EU, the western powers, especially in relation to defence policy, and – according to her critics – less condemnatory of Russia.
RM Block
All of that was played out endlessly during the campaign. She did not retreat from her outspoken views at all. But what she did emphasise repeatedly was that being outspoken would manifest very differently if elected president.
In her speech on Saturday evening she spoke about being “a voice for peace, a voice that builds on our policy of neutrality, a voice that articulates the existential threat posed by climate change”.
“We can shape a new Republic together,” she said.
However, there was a qualifier that said the shaping would fall to others. “That’s your job. That’s a political job on the ground,” she said to her supporters.
Like her predecessor, Michael D Higgins, Connolly comes from a modest background and came relatively late to politics.
Connolly was one of 14 children, seven boys and seven girls. She was born in 1957 and grew up in the inner city neighbourhood of Shantalla, one of the biggest council estates in Galway at the time. Another person who grew up in the same estate, close to University College Hospital, was the singer Mary Coughlan.
Her mother died aged 43 when Connolly was nine years old. Her father, a carpenter and later a building contractor, brought the children up, with the help of his eldest daughters. At the time in 1966, the oldest sibling was 21 and the youngest a toddler of one.
In interviews, Connolly has talked about her social conscience being honed as a teenager through volunteering work with the Legion of Mary and later with the Order of Malta. She has said she scraped through academically. She did a BA in psychology in UCG (now the University of Galway) in the late 1970s and was awarded a master’s in psychology in Leeds University in 1981.
[ Who will be Ireland’s ‘first gentleman’? The man behind Catherine ConnollyOpens in new window ]
She practised as a clinical psychologist for several years but found her true calling when she went back to college and studied law. She qualified as a barrister in 1991 and began practising on the western circuit. She had a general practice. Her main area of work was in family law but, as the row about home repossession cases during the campaign showed, she worked in other areas.
There was a strong academic and autodidactic strain in the family. Her older brother, Tommy, settled in Germany after completing his medical degree and became a well-known psychiatrist in Nuremberg. Connolly was one of a few of her siblings who subsequently learned German. Indeed, at the age of 50, upon entering politics, she endeavoured to improve her Irish, then basic, which she now speaks seamlessly.
Connolly has been married to former woodwork teacher Brian McEnery for 33 years and they have two adult sons: Brian – who works as a teacher in Galway – and Stephen.
She became involved in politics in the city during the 1990s and won a seat on the south ward of the council for the Labour Party in 1999. In the 2004 election she moved to the west ward, to allow her sister, Collette, to run in the south ward. Both sisters were elected to the council.
Michael D Higgins was the Labour Party TD for Galway West at the time, and Connolly was seen as his natural successor.
She was to the left of Higgins politically, however. She was one of a handful of Labour councillors in the State to vote against both Nice treaties. She also voted against bin charges when Labour supported them.
Connolly wanted to be added to the party ticket for the 2007 election but she perceived she had been blocked by Higgins and his supporters. Shortly afterwards, she left the party, and stood as an Independent in the election, not coming close to winning a seat.
Her next serious tilt at the Dáil was in 2011. As an Independent she fell short by only 17 votes, losing out to Fine Gael’s Seán Kyne. Those close to her were of the view that they were a little naive and if they had contested more of the votes deemed ‘spoiled’ she could have overtaken Kyne.
In the 2016 election, nothing was left to chance. With the Labour Party’s vote falling precipitously after serving in an unpopular government, Connolly easily won the left-wing ‘city’ seat in the five-seat constituency. She has retained it ever since.
She had come late to national politics at the age of 57, having served 17 years as a councillor. Although a novice, her advance was rapid. She contested the vote for Leas-Cheann Comhairle, the second-most senior position in parliament. Against the grain, she defeated Fergus O’Dowd, the candidate of largest party Fine Gael.
In the 2016 Dáil, Connolly aligned herself to a group of left-wing Independent TDs composed of Mick Wallace, Clare Daly, Joan Collins, Thomas Pringle and Maureen O’Sullivan. The group was also close to the two small left parties, People Before Profit and Solidarity.
Her closeness to Wallace and Daly, in particular, was scrutinised intensely during the campaign. She never disowned them, instead praising Daly for being a great guide to her as a new TD and ensuring she got a position on the Public Accounts Committee.
A big question for the incoming president is how she can reconcile her radical anti-establishment politics with a position as first citizen, at the very heart of that establishment. She has gone to some length during the election campaign to distinguish between her views, and her understanding of official roles. She has pointed to her objectivity as Leas-Cheann Comhairle and as a barrister and officer of the court.
“Her performance as Leas-Cheann Comhairle will give comfort to people who will think we have a radical Marxist in the Áras,” Prof Gary Murphy of Dublin City University has said.
His DCU colleague, Prof Kevin Rafter, who has written a book on the presidency, said she will “have to recognise the limits of the presidency but she now has a platform unlike anything she had previously as a TD”.
He said if she is wise she will not look for daily or weekly conflict with the Government.
“The cohabitation may be somewhat uncomfortable for both sides but it can work,” he said.
“Separately, she’ll need solid experienced people working in the Áras ... the adviser role as a conduit to Government Buildings can keep disputes and differences private.”
Already much has been made of the monthly meetings she will have with the Taoiseach, an important fulcrum for the ambitions of her term. A senior adviser to the Government said at the weekend that the relationship might be “rocky”, much like the initial conflicts between Mary Robinson and Charles Haughey during 1990.
For Rafter, the approach to her new role is key: “The skill is to use the platform effectively – recognising the limitations of a non-political office but exploiting the symbolic authority and soft power of the Áras, as her three most immediate predecessors did,” he said.
