.png)
5 hours ago
9
The lights dimmed and the youthful crowd packed into Vicar Street, a concert venue in inner-city Dublin, eyes locked on the stage.
The emcee made barbed jokes about Ireland’s government, but there was little need to warm up the audience. The atmosphere was already electric. He launched a chant. “I say Catherine. You say?”
The roared response could have lifted the roof. “Connolly!”
Barring a last-minute political upset, Catherine Connolly, a name unfamiliar to most Irish people just a few months ago, is expected to become Ireland’s next head of state after a presidential election on Friday.
Anger over a housing crisis and the cost of living, campaign blunders by the ruling centre-right coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, rare unity in the leftwing opposition and deft use of social media have combined to make Connolly a symbol of change.
At Vicar Street on Monday night, the independent leftwing candidate strode on to the stage: grey-haired, dressed in black, smiling.
When the roars subsided she spoke in Irish, then English. “What we have achieved together, I cannot put a value on that.”
Her voice was soft, the accent pure Galway. “We want a republic that we can be proud of, a republic that will never stand over the normalisation of genocide, or the normalisation of homelessness, or obscene waitings lists. But enough of that. This is a night to celebrate.”
The crowd and the performers, including Christy Moore and the Mary Wallopers, obliged by turning the concert into a rollicking mix of folk music, punk ethos and political conviction that felt like a victory party.
Opinion polls give Connolly, 68, a wide lead over her establishment rival, Heather Humphreys, in the election to choose Ireland’s 10th president and successor to Michael D Higgins.
“She’s offering something different, a fresh perspective,” said Cian Murray, 22, an environmental science student at the concert. The current government had failed, said Hannah McGinley, 25, a student from Donegal. “Young people are fleeing here. All my friends are in Canada or Australia. I’ve nobody left. When I go to my home town there’s nobody there.”
The prospect of Connolly serving a seven-year term at Áras an Uachtaráin, the presidential residence, thrills supporters – including the rap trio Kneecap – but it leaves others resigned or dismayed. Almost half of voters say they do not feel represented by either candidate, raising concerns about a low turnout and high rate of spoilt ballots.
The presidency is a largely ceremonial post, but opponents worry Connolly could offend Ireland’s European allies and shudder at what she might say to Donald Trump. She has accused Nato of warmongering, likened Germany’s arms spending to the 1930s, voted against EU treaties and said Hamas is “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people”. Outsiders have compared her to Jeremy Corbyn.
Born in the working-class Galway suburb of Shantalla, Connolly was nine when her mother died, leaving her father, a carpenter and shipbuilder, to raise 14 children. Connolly tried to fill the void by telling herself it was better to be without a mother. “As life went on, I realised that was a coping mechanism that served me to a point, but not well,” she told Hot Press magazine. “It takes nearly a lifetime to understand, actually, the importance of a mother and the consequences of losing her.”
After earning a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Leeds she returned to Galway, completed a law degree and practised as a barrister and clinical psychologist.
She married, had two sons, and was elected to Galway city council for the Labour party in 1999. She served as mayor in 2004 and wanted to run for the Dáil but her potential running mate, Higgins, reportedly did not want another Labour candidate in the multi-seat constituency, leaving her blocked.
Connolly left the party and was elected as an independent TD, or MP, in 2016. In parliament she lambasted inequality and western intervention in conflicts, including Syria, which she visited in 2018. “She was outspoken and quite radical but in person quite affable,” recalled one Fine Gael member. Some former Labour colleagues, however, called her dogmatic and inflexible.
In 2020 Connolly became the first woman elected as parliament’s leas-cheann comhairle, or deputy speaker. This elevated her profile, but when she announced in July that she would run for president it seemed quixotic. Only two tiny parties, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit, backed her.
Labour, overlooking old acrimony, then endorsed her, followed by Sinn Féin, which decided to not run its own candidate and instead throw its formidable resources and electoral organisation behind Connolly. Not previously associated with the cause of Irish unification, Connolly declared it a “foregone conclusion”.
Fine Gael’s original candidate, Regina Doherty, dropped out, citing health problems, so the party turned to Humphreys, 62, a former cabinet minister. Fianna Fáil fielded a political novice, Jim Gavin, who withdrew after a financial scandal imploded his campaign. Other would-be candidates failed to get on the ballot, leaving a two-horse race, though Gavin’s late withdrawal means his name will still be on the ballot.
Humphreys, tarnished by association with an unpopular government and her lack of Irish, proved to be a poor debater. Connolly, in contrast, shrugged off attacks on her record and combined a barrister’s eloquence with a gentle delivery that softened a worldview well to the left of Ireland’s political mainstream.
She courted young voters via podcasts, Instagram and TikTok, including videos that showed her doing keepy-uppy that went viral. “I thought it was AI,” the emcee told the concert audience, drawing laughter and cheers. “Is there anything Catherine cannot do?”
In a televised debate on Tuesday, Connolly said she would respect the limits of the office, which some interpreted as a tacit promise to rein in controversial views and avoid constitutional crises.
Asked if she would tell Trump that the US was an enabler of genocide, 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.”
