When you go to the ballot box tomorrow – if you go – you will be presented with a choice of three people to be President of Ireland. Only two of these people actually desire the office, the third – Mr. Gavin – having announced that he no longer wishes to be considered a contestant in the election.
The two remaining candidates – Heather Humphreys of Fine Gael and Catherine Connolly, nominally independent but in reality the candidate of a broad swathe of left-wing parties – are deeply and almost unfathomably flawed.
We will begin with Ms. Humphreys.
Over these past four weeks, the Fine Gael candidate has done little to inspire confidence that she would be a first citizen of any stature or significance. She is an unambiguously awful communicator, often incapable of speaking in anything broader than the blandest of platitudes. Her record as an elected politician likewise does not inspire. One might have expected, across a lengthy career in cabinet, that Humphreys would have one or two legislative accomplishments to point to: A significant reform in welfare here, or a criminal justice bill there. But the cupboard is bare. Were you hiring her for any other job, you would not look at her record and decide that she had a history of innovation, reform, or improvement in any position she has held.
More than that, we must judge candidates not only on who they are, but on what they represent.
Heather Humphreys is the candidate of party that has presided over the governance of the Irish state for fourteen long years: A period in which many crises have arisen, but few have been solved. She served in Governments that bequeathed our young people a housing crisis; she served as a Minister when the cost of living soared; she presided at cabinet while the country was racked by covid lockdowns; and she had not one word to say while immigration exploded, or the health service budget exploded. If politicians are to be judged on their records, Heather Humphreys cannot be judged a person worthy of the first citizenship of a self-respecting Republic.
Then there is Ms. Connolly.
For all the talk of a “smear campaign” against the frontrunner, little has been said about Catherine Connolly by her opponents that is not true. Her judgment is questionable, as evidenced by her decision to hire a woman with convictions for the possession of arms, and who was a member of a radical left organisation. Her integrity can also be questioned, given her decision to represent banks in repossession cases while simultaneously – or close to simultaneously – describing those same banks as criminals for repossessing homes. This is not a matter of a “cab rank rule”. It is a matter of hypocrisy.
Further, she stands on the opposite side to a majority of the Irish people on many key issues: If you object to the Fine Gael record on migration, well, she would increase migration further. If you object to the Fine Gael record on free speech, well, she would limit speech further. If you object to the government’s record on tax and spending, well, she would tax and spend even more.
She also appears to see the Presidency as a platform from which to run her own foreign policy, independent of the elected Government. The notion that this country will be well served by a head of state who so openly loathes so many states who are key relationships for this country seems fanciful, at best, and self-destructive at worst.
Outside of these two choices, tens of thousands of Irish voters, including many of our readers, feel justly and fairly as if they have been completely shut out of the conversation.
It is ironic, indeed, that the ballot paper includes the name of a man who does not wish to be President, when so many qualified candidates who did wish to be President were denied access to it. We do not speak only here of Maria Steen, Gareth Sheridan, and Nick Delehanty; but also figures of consequence like Bertie Ahern, Declan Ganley, and Sean Kelly. All of whom would arguably have been better choices than those on the ballot tomorrow.
What is the disenfranchised voter to do? A majority, of course, will simply not vote at all, as is their right. Many others will spoil their votes. Some, reluctantly, will vote for Ms. Humphreys or Ms. Connolly because they have adjudged them to be the least worst option. All of these choices are defensible.
Our considered view of the matter is only that you should go to the ballot box tomorrow, and claim your paper. What you do with it thereafter is your own affair.
But exercising your democratic right to participate in the election should not be seen as an endorsement of the process. This election – from nomination process to campaign – has been an abject farce. Tens of thousands of spoiled votes, should that occur, will make no difference to the eventual winner, but might perhaps deny that winner a legitimacy that would – for either one of them – be undeserved in any case.
What is certain, whichever candidate wins, is that they will enter office with the least amount of public goodwill of any previous holder of the Presidency. Whichever one of them emerges triumphant, they should immediately pay attention to the crisis of democratic legitimacy that this election has exposed, and devote their term in office to being a President for all of the people, rather than a representative of their narrow – and increasingly uninspiring – political coalitions.
We live, as we all must, in hope. But not, alas, expectation.