Catherine Connolly was elected as the tenth president of Ireland on 25th October 2025. Connolly is a former member of the Irish Labour Party and has been a leftist independent TD (Teachta Dála or Member of the Dáil, the lower house of the Irish Oireachtas or Parliament) since 2016.

The Irish presidency is a non-executive position, and historically the holders of the office have been carefully controlled by the government of the day in such a way as to ensure that they avoid espousing positions on any current issues that might be deemed ‘political’. However, this hitherto accepted circumscription was changed significantly by the seventh president, Mary Robinson, who was elected in 1990. Robinson, also a former member of the Labour Party, is widely recognised as having changed the nature of the presidency and turned it into a more active and agentic position. After her term as president ended in 1997, Robinson served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights until 2002.

The medium-term context for the 2025 election is that in the most recent general election, held in November 2024, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael – the two centre-right parties that have dominated Irish electoral politics from the 1922 inception of the Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) – between them won 42.7% of the first-preference vote (Ireland uses a proportional representation system) and 86 out of the 174 seats in the Dáil, thus requiring the support of a number of right-leaning independent TDs in order to provide the majority that allows formation of a government. The previous general election of 2020, about which I have published here (https://imhojournal.org/imho_author/dermot-dix/), was the first time these two parties, between them, secured less than 50% of the first-preference vote and less than 50% of the seats in the Dáil. They had lost ground to parties on the left, and continue to do so. A recent poll placed their combined support at no higher than 35%; however, the usual caveats about polls not being the same as election results must apply.

In the 2025 presidential election, five leftist parties nominated Catherine Connolly as their candidate: Sinn Féin, the Labour Party, the Social Democrats, Solidarity/People Before Profit (S/PBP,) and the Green Party. These parties between them won 68 seats in the 2024 Dáil general election: Sinn Féin won the lion’s share of 39, with the Labour Party winning 11, the Social Democrats 11, S/PBP six and the Green Party one (the Greens had been reduced from 11 seats to just one seat in the current Dáil, having been punished by the electorate for propping up the previous centre-right coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil). The Workers’ Party and the Communist Party of Ireland, neither of which has elected representatives in the current Dáil, also endorsed Connolly.

The two centre-right parties conducted presidential campaigns that have been roundly adjudged to have been disastrous, starting and ending with their very poor candidate selections. Connolly won an enormous 63.4% of the vote. In his 28^th October 2025 article in Jacobin, Daniel Finn argues that this must be seen as a landslide victory, despite attempts on the part of conservative or right-wing voices to downplay the result on account of the low turnout and the high number of spoiled votes. Finn argues that the turnout was not especially out of line with that of recent presidential elections. He does concede that the number of spoiled votes was considerably higher than in previous elections, and adjudges this number to have been the result of an orchestrated campaign on the part of forces on the emerging far-right in Ireland, disgruntled with their inability to field a candidate.

The nomination bar is set high: in order to secure a place on the ballot, a candidate must win support either from 20 Oireachtas members or four county councils; however, the big parties have the power to make it very difficult for any independent candidate to receive enough such support – these parties want to limit opposition to their own candidates. Ultimately, just three names appeared on the ballot: Connolly; Heather Humphries, the Fine Gael candidate; and Jim Gavin, a big name in the Gaelic Athletic Association and the Fianna Fáil candidate. Gavin dropped out before the election (though his name remained on the ballot) owing to media coverage of overpaid rent mistakenly paid to him by a tenant a number of years ago that Gavin had not repaid.

Maria Steen, a socially arch-conservative campaigner with close ties to the reactionary Iona Institute for Religion and Society, tried but failed to secure a nomination as an independent. She is in the tradition of old-style Catholic conservatism that has a long history in Ireland. Steen and her supporters have argued that her failure to secure a place on the ballot is somehow evidence of the ‘undemocratic’ nature of the process, but the more persuasive reason for her failure is that her campaign simply started too late.

However, what Finn has in mind is a new kind of far-right movement that is growing legs in Ireland, an anti-immigrant movement that blames Ireland’s housing crisis on the growing numbers of migrants – both economic migrants and asylum-seekers – coming to the country. This movement has thus far fared poorly in local, national, and European elections, but it has been growing more active and violent in recent times. Just two days before the presidential election, there were shockingly violent riots on the part of an anti-immigrant mob outside an IPAS (International Protection Accommodation Service) centre near Dublin. These centres offer accommodation and basic services to migrants applying for international protection.

The emergence of this new, orchestrated far-right is alarming for its own sake, but, further, it is already seen to be pushing the centre-right parties further to the right. Shortly after Connolly’s election, Simon Harris, the leader of Fine Gael and Tánaiste (deputy-prime-minister) of Ireland, made a statement to the effect that Ireland’s migration numbers have been “too high” and that the government should “listen to the people of this country” about these numbers being too high. After being roundly criticised for these comments by figures from left parties, Harris has stood by his comments.

Meanwhile, what can be said of Ireland’s new president and her political views? She is of a working-class background, the ninth of 14 children of her carpenter father and a mother who died when Catherine was a child. She qualified as a psychologist and has practised as a barrister. She is bilingual in English and Irish and is an advocate for the Irish language. She has staunchly opposed what she argues is increasing militarism on the part of highly-placed officials in the European Union, and strongly advocates Ireland’s continuing military neutrality – a long-held position of the Irish state that she perceives as being under threat from the centre-right parties in Ireland. She has condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but has also criticised what she has seen as NATO’s war-mongering. She is a supporter of Palestine and a critic of Israel, a state she has accused of genocidal actions. In domestic Irish affairs, she was a strong supporter of the referenda that legalised same-sex marriage in 2015 and abortion in 2018. She supports a united Ireland, though as a self-proclaimed pacifist, she has said that she never supported the Provisional IRA during the so-called Troubles of the late 1960s to the late 1990s. She has said she will use her position to tackle issues such as climate change and homelessness.

Perhaps predictably, some of the reactions from conservatives to Connolly’s victory have been derisive. In her 25^th October article in The Spectator (“Catherine Connolly’s election is a low for Ireland”) Liz Walsh dismisses Connolly as “Ireland’s 68-year-old answer to Jeremy Corbyn”. The Australian labels Connolly a “nutter” and calls her election victory “the ultimate Irish joke”. Connolly’s criticism of Israel and her controversial comment to the effect that Hamas is “part of the fabric of Gaza society” has led to negative coverage from sources that are supportive of the Israeli state’s onslaught on Gaza, notwithstanding her clarification that she “utterly condemned Hamas’s actions”. The economist David McWilliams, writing in the Irish Times, takes an economically right-wing position – as distinct from the long-standing religious right and the emergent far-right – and bemoans Irish leftist anti-Americanism in the face of the significant role American multi-national corporations play in the Irish economy. He argues that Connolly’s election “can be seen as a continuation of what could be termed the ‘Presidential Left’ – a low-stakes leftism movement” that is more performative than substantial.

At the left end of the political spectrum in Ireland, Finghín Kelly, writing on the website of the (Trotskyist) Irish Socialist Party, summarises Connolly’s campaign highly favourably. He notes her “solidarity with Palestine, opposition to militarisation and criticism of the neo-liberal model for housing and public services”. He also highlights that she “stood for the rights of disabled people and carers, and for resources for the Irish language and Irish-speaking communities”, and that she was “the only candidate to speak about the climate and ecological crises”.

Looking to the middle: Rory Carroll, Ireland correspondent at The Guardian, argues that “[a]nger over a housing crisis and the cost of living, campaign blunders by Fine Gael and its ruling partner Fianna Fáil, rare unity among leftwing parties and deft use of social media combined to make Connolly a symbol of change” but also argues that her “landslide victory in Ireland’s presidential election is a stunning political feat that humiliates the establishment but does not signify a national swerve to the left” – and that “Connolly’s stunning victory humbles old parties and energises the left, yet it’s no revolution: the presidency remains symbolic”. Time will tell if Carroll is on target here. A fact that would appear to support his thesis is that, after all, Connolly’s predecessor as president was the leftist Michael D. Higgins (a long-time member of the Labour Party) – who held the office for two 7-year terms – and his term of office did not overlap with the election of a left-wing government.

Looking at the leftist bloc that endorsed Connolly, there is an imbalance in representation, Sinn Féin being a relative behemoth among this group. The smaller leftist parties fear being outmaneuvered by Sinn Féin and seeing their vote share erode owing to Sinn Féin’s populist appeal. They also voice scepticism about Sinn Féin’s credentials – immediately after the presidential election, the leader of the Social Democrats described Sinn Féin as a party that promotes policies that “are not left-wing”. Sinn Féin has indeed taken positions – on issues such as property and corporation taxation – that are more often associated with conservative parties. It remains to be seen if these five leftist parties that endorsed Connolly will cohere in any significant way as a coalition before the next general election, not due to be held until 2029.