The Gist: The Presidential Selection

Irish Presidential elections are strange things. The role is largely ceremonial, but does come with sufficient constitutional powers and duties that you would feel better with a safe pair of hands in the job. For example, every time you see people saying the President should send a piece of legislation they don't agree with to the Supreme Court to be tested before they sign it, remember that is the surest way of rendering it judicially bulletproof. And be glad that we have yet had an incumbent who didn't understand that fact.

And yet, the job is more than just an accumulation of Constitutional tidying-up tasks. Since it stopped being a retirement home (or sometimes, exile) for Fianna Fáil politicians with the defeat of Brian Lenihan by Mary Robinson in 1990, the role of President has taken on an era-defining task. In part, this is just a function of the fact that each term is seven years long, and the incumbent can nominate themselves for a second term if they feel like it. It's hard to be the head of state for 14 years and not, in some way, end up being the face of a particular era.

What has been impressive in the last few decades is how well each of the incumbents has personified the aspirations of those eras. They have each, in a very different way, brought themselves to the role while giving voice to wider social (as opposed to party-political) undercurrents forcing themselves to the surface.

So, as Michael D. Higgins prepares to step down from a 14 year run as Ireland's most voted-for and popular politician, shoulders are jostling to replace him.

This weekend, with Fianna Fáil finally admitting they were going to run a candidate, we seem to have reached the start of the real competition. We don't have all of the runners and riders settled, but it seems like a moment to do an early overview of some of the hopefuls.

Problem: To take the job, you need to run for election.

(Pictured below, the typical Irish Presidential election candidate experience)

via GIPHY

The Presidential Hopefuls

1) Catherine Connolly
Supported by: Social Democrats, Labour Party, People Before Profit

Catherine Connolly is first on this list because she is, to date, the only person to ensure she will be an actual name you'll see on the ballot. She did a widely admired job as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle in the last Dáil and proved she was capable of separating her own political position from the needs of a constitutional role. Her politics are, as her list of support would suggest, left wing.

She has also run a really bad campaign so far. I mean, it's been a mare. At heart, the repeating problem is an unwillingness to say "I thought that then, but I know better now". In 2018, for example, she was one of 11 Oireachtas members who nominated Gemma O'Doherty as a Presidential Candidate. Asked about it in July of this year she said her 'judgement call' was right at the time.

Now, the thing here is that Catherine Connolly would lose precisely no votes if she said "Janey, that turned out to be a mistake and we all dodged a bullet there. You live and learn."

But she wasn't willing to admit a mistake. It is the same with her trip to Syria under the Assad regime. She went, the decision has aged like milk, but she has let it come back up, time and again, because she won't say it was an error, even in hindsight.

It's early days yet, and the ship may right itself. There is talk of bringing in Michael D's former campaign manager. But the terrible crucible of a Presidential election is like Greek drama, always working to reveal the tragic flaws in even the most admirable of characters.

2) Billy Kelleher MEP
Supported by: One Fianna Fáil TD so far.

Billy Kelleher MEP is the next on the list, because he is the person who, while not having a nomination locked in, has received the most actual votes of any of the other runners.

Kelleher is what you would receive if you ordered the delivery of approximately two meters of extruded Fianna Fáil. He is a career politician, and was a Junior Minister under first Bertie and then Brian Cowen. He later went on to call on Micheál Martin to commission an inquiry into the reasons for the decline in Fianna Fáil support. This suggests either a neck made of a fine alloy of copper and zinc or a chronic lack of attention.

Kelleher faces an uphill battle for the party nomination because, just after he declared his intention to run, his party leader endorsed someone else.

3) Jim Gavin
Supported by: Micheál Martin and various other senior FFers

Jim Gavin was the manager of Dublin's GAA football team when it won seven All-Irelands. He has a background as a military pilot and has been the second-in-command in the Irish Aviation Authority as their Chief Operations Officer.

In other words, he has been an impressive public figure who has been appointed, not elected, to every role. This makes him almost an archetype of the surprisingly brittle Presidential candidate. Amusingly, his wikipaedia page has received more edits and expansion since 23rd August 2025 than it had in all the preceding years of its existence. My favourite is the one by "Irish Spook" tagged "possible AI-generated citations". Given his CV we may expect he will be asked particularly about his opinion on Ireland's military neutrality.

Maybe I'll be wrong, but I feel there are submerged rocks ahead.

4) Heather Humphreys
Supported by: Fine Gael

After Mairead McGuinness withdrew for health reasons, Fine Gael turned to former TD and former Deputy Leader Heather Humphreys. This required them to shoulder their Munster MEP, Sean Kelly, out of the way.

This choice was a slightly strange one. The campaign proper hasn't started, but it was only in October of last year that she announced that she wouldn't stand again for election for FG in the General Election because her health and energy levels weren't what they were.

She said then that "the bottom line is I'm getting older and like everyone else... you don't have the same energy you have when you were younger". She then went on to say that, for the same reason, running for the Presidential election "wasn't on the cards for me".

But, Good News! Just as FG's first candidate stepped out, things were looking up:

"I’m well. I feel like I’m back to my old self...I’ve had a good rest. The tank is full again."

Of course, Fine Gael have never managed to have a single candidate elected to the Presidency in the history of the state. So the bar for success here is pretty low.

5) Mary Hanafin- Non Runner.
Supported by: Herself.

Mary Hanafin had as much chance of winning the Presidential election as any given banana. In fact, even though she would have had the advantage of (a) being called Mary and (b) not being a perishable soft fruit, she had less of a chance than the banana because any given banana wouldn't have been Mary Hanafin.

She announced today she was withdrawing from consideration to become Fianna Fáil's candidate. Similarly, I am announcing I am no longer expecting to win this year's Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

6) Gareth Sheridan
Supported by: Senator Sharon Keogan

One of Sen. Sharon Keogan's slate of mutually exclusive would-be independent candidates, Pharma millionaire Gareth Sheridan burst like a weakly -thrown water balloon onto the public consciousness through a Sunday Independent interview. He immediately followed this up with a public spat with former Presidential-loser Sean Gallagher and capped off his introduction to the voters by being unable to say which of Senator Keogan's policies (micro-chipping special needs children, saying LGBTQ people are involved in a hostile take-over around the world, using the Ireland Is Full hashtag) he supported. He first complained that "you can't have opinions these days without being called left or right". Which is true, particularly when those are political positions which are, you know, Very Right.

Apparently, although he said that immigration was a "tricky subject", the best he could do in response was saying he wasn't "completely pushing Sharon Keogan's message". So, only partially pushing it?

A small reminder that, to get elected, Michael D. Higgins received 822,566 votes in 2018. In order to be elected Senator in 2025, Sharon Keogan received 115 votes and was elected on the last count.

I'm sure this will all run swimmingly for him.

7) Person Unknown
Supported by: Sinn Féin

An empty seat at the table has been left by SF's inability to settle on whether they want to run a candidate and who, if they did, that person would be. Sinn Féin, by now, knows that running heavy-weight politicians from Northern Ireland (Martin McGuinness, Michelle Gildernew) in the Republic has not been a winning formula.

They could try to retire their leader to the Arás (call this the Dev Manoeuver), but Mary Lou McDonald doesn't seem too keen on being parked in the Park.

Or they could back Catherine Connolly (who has been touring West Belfast this week expressing her support for a United Ireland, in the first savvy campaign move we've seen from her camp).

But until they pick a direction, Sinn Féin have made themselves irrelevant to this election.

8) Bertie Ahern - Undeclared
Suported by: Definitely not Micheál Martin

Bertie has been circling around a Presidential bid for a few years. He refuses to rule it out whenever he's asked. He positioned himself for one by rejoining Fianna Fáil.

He knew Micheál Martin wasn't pleased with the idea, but he may have thought he could square that inside the party.

Then CMAT released her bombshell single Euro-Country, namechecking Bertie in her broadside on growing up with Da's killing themselves around her.

And that, believe it or not, was the end of Bertie's chances. By making the financial crash a culturally live issue again, she channelled 1.21Gws of raw artistic power directly into Bertie's campaign and sent it like a DeLorean, back into all those futures lost.