Catherine Connolly (born 1957) only became involved in active politics in 1999. Michael D. Higgins, the outgoing president of Ireland (2011-2025), encouraged Connolly to join the Labour Party and stand for election. Both Connolly and Higgins (known in Ireland as Michael D) come from Galway, a city on the west coast of Ireland. Connolly was born there, the ninth of fourteen children — seven girls and seven boys — in a working-class family. Her mother died when Catherine was only nine, and her father, a home builder, relied on his older children to care for the younger ones. In this household, Catherine Connolly developed a keen sense of service and discipline, which included involvement in local Catholic charities such as the Legion of Mary and the Order of Malta. This was, as she describes it, Connolly’s road to “her socialism”.
As a lawyer in Galway with a young family (two boys), Connolly ran for and won a seat on the Galway City Council in 1999, later becoming Mayor of Galway from 2004 to 2005. Michael D had been Mayor from 1990 to 1991. Just as she followed him to City Hall, Connolly has now followed Michael D to the presidency of Ireland.
Ireland is a country divided by British colonialism: most of the population lives in the Republic of Ireland (population 5.2 million), while a part of the island’s population lives in the northern counties still controlled by the United Kingdom (population 1.5 million). There are between 50 million and 80 million people around the world, mostly in the Americas, who claim Irish descent (the most famous person, now featured on an Irish stamp, was Che Guevara). Half the population in the six northern counties have Irish citizenship (while there are nearly three million diaspora Irish with citizenship), making them eligible to vote for the president.
While the president strictly speaking represents the Republic —and even then, in a largely ceremonial role— the post has been shaped by its previous nine holders as a pulpit from which to speak for all of Ireland. Micheal D, a poet as well as a politician, has transformed the post, shaping it into a moral lectern from which to advocate for Ireland’s role in the world based on larger values. This is a post that Catherine Connolly will undoubtedly enjoy.
Both Catherine Connolly and Michael D are unabashedly left-wing, absorbed by the struggle for people to live with dignity in Ireland itself and gripped by severe global challenges, particularly those posed by US imperialism. Connolly said she first entered politics twenty-six years ago because of the housing crisis, the ‘defining social crisis of our time’. This remains the most important problem for young people in Ireland, many of whom find it impossible to rent decent accommodation near their places of work.
In the 1990s, Ireland’s economy boomed through the liberalisation of finance, earning the country the nickname ‘Celtic Tiger’ (a phrase first used by a Morgan Stanley analyst). A low corporate tax rate and membership in the European Union allowed the country to attract tech money and real estate investment. This drove up housing prices, which have not collapsed despite the bust of the Celtic Tiger after the 2008 credit crisis (Ireland suffered a similar fate as Iceland, but with less prison time for its own banking elite). It is estimated that the country suffers a housing shortage of a quarter of a million units, that a new teacher in Dublin would have to use their entire salary to pay rent for a modest apartment, and that while wages rose at twenty-seven percent between 2012 and 2022, property prices increased by seventy-five percent. Connolly spent most of her campaign focused on the direct problems faced by the Irish people, although the presidency can only lift issues into the public debate and advise the elected government.
When I visited Michael D in the presidential residence in 2014, he was gripped by the waste of human resources on war and war-making to the exclusion of solving problems of human life. He was interested in why so much of social wealth was being spent on warfare, when it was clear that war-making (such as with the US War on Terror) merely created more problems than it solved. We discussed the issue of Irish neutrality and how Ireland had slipped from that core principle by allowing the US permission to land warplanes and CIA planes at Shannon airport, the closest airport to Galway. Connolly will follow Michael D into the presidential office with this same concern. She has made vital statements not only against US war-making, but against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. In June, Connolly called Israel a “terrorist state”. It is likely that these sorts of statements will continue to be made from Dublin.
Since Éamon de Valera won the prime ministership in 1932 as the leader of Fianna Fáil (the Republican Party), the country has been led back and forth by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (the Irish Party). Both are now parties of the right (with close links to the political elite in the United States) and have, since 2020, been in a grand alliance for the prime ministership. Connolly ran against Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys, who put up a very poor show.
Though running as “independent”, Connolly was backed by the broad left: 100 percent Redress, the Communist Party of Ireland, the Green Party, the Labour Party, People Before Profit, Sinn Féin, the Social Democratic Party, and the Workers Party, as well as a raft of organisations and movements. The backing of Sinn Féin, the second largest party in parliament, was crucial; the party brings to bear the weight of the republican tradition, which is focused on the unification of Ireland, and the weight of the party’s working-class roots in the cities where the housing question is paramount.
While Connolly has said that she will represent the entire country, she will be largely the voice of the working-class and the oppressed —not the Irish landlords and bankers. Nor will she be kind to US imperialism and its allies.
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This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books
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