After a run of disappointing results, Ireland’s footballers last night scored a memorable victory, beating Portugal 2-0 in a World Cup Qualifying match. I attribute the result to the new Head Coach, pictured below…
And here is a photo of Ireland’s two-goal hero, Troy Parrot, in action.
Earlier today, in Dublin Castle, Catherine Connolly was sworn in as the new President of Ireland. Her inauguration was the 14th to the office of Uachtarán na hÉireann and she is the 10th person to have that title. The ceremony was the first of its kind I have seen and I was impressed by its combination of simplicity and dignity. The previous president, Michael D. Higgins, looked rather emotional as he handed over the reins. I wish him all the best in his retirement. I think he’ll be a hard act to follow, and I wish Catherine Connolly all the best in the role for the next 7 years.
Incidentally, the oath of office reads:
I láthair Dia na nUilechumhacht, táimse, [ainm*], á ghealladh agus á dhearbhú go sollúnta is go fírinneach bheith i mo thaca agus i mo dhídin do Bhunreacht Éireann, agus a dlíthe a chaomhnú, mo dhualgais a chomhlíonadh go dílis coinsiasach de réir an Bhunreachta is an dlí, agus mo lándícheall a dhéanamh ar son leasa is fónaimh mhuintir na hÉireann. Dia do mo stiúradh agus do mo chumhdach
*This “ainm” is the Irish word for “name”; the President-Elect inserts their name here. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the student to translate the rest of the oath into English.
To nobody’s surprise, the winner of the Irish Presidential Election is Catherine Connolly. The official declaration of the results from the 43 constituencies of the Republic of Ireland was announced in Dublin Castle shortly after 7pm this evening, with an emphatic margin of victory for the Galway West TD. The total number of votes cast was 1,656,436, a turnout of just 45.8% (though that was a little higher than in 2018). The number of Invalid votes was 213,738.
Catherine Connolly was comfortably elected on the first count with 914,143 votes, more than half the number of valid votes. Heather Humphreys had 424,987 votes and Jim Gavin (who withdrew at the start) got 103,568 votes.
It is worth pointing out that the share of the vote (63%) and the number of votes cast in her favour are the largest for any President in the Republic’s history.
The large number of spoilt votes (13%) is probably attributable to the narrowness of the field, but those arguing that the nomination process should be changed need to remember that Article 12 of the Constitution of the Republic of Ireland stipulates how the process should occur so any change will need a referendum. People of course are entitled to spoil their paper if they wish, but I did read that one voter smearing their ballot paper with faeces, which is both disgusting and inexcusable.
I’ll repeat my view that the decision to hold the ballot on the Friday before a Bank Holiday long weekend probably contributed to the low turnout, as many people would have been planning to go away. I said the same last time, in 2018. The 2011 Presidential Election was held on a Thursday, which I think is a much better day to have an election.
Anyway, heartiest congratulations to Catherine Connolly, who won by a country mile, and will shortly become the next Uachtarán na hÉireann, the 10th person to hold that title.
So we come to it at last. After weeks of campaigning, today’s the day we get to cast our votes in the election of a new President of the Republic of Ireland. All the polls suggest that the winner will be Catherine Connolly, and indeed the only posters I have seen around my neighbourhood are for her.
The only message I got through the door was for her too:
I shall shortly be heading to the Presentation Girls National School in Maynooth, which is my polling station. I’ll be voting for Catherine Connolly, in case you want to know. She is clearly the better candidate; my opinion of Heather Humphreys went down every time I heard her speak. Anyway, we should know the result by tomorrow evening when we’ll find out whether the opinion polls are right.
Today also happens to be the last day before our study break in Maynooth University and the start of a long weekend. I did my last teaching session of the week yesterday, actually. That’s why I didn’t have to get up early to vote before work. It also means have research on the agenda for today. Monday 27th October is a Bank Holiday and there are no lectures for the rest of the week. There are conferring ceremonies, though, including one for my recently-completed PhD student on Wednesday.
Update: I voted as planned. The polling station was fairly busy.
Now that all the excitement about the Nobel Prize for Physics has died down I thought I would do a quick post to follow up my previous one about the election for the next President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann). Only three people gathered enough support by the deadline to be named on the ballot paper, namely: Catherine Connolly (an independent TD standing as a unified leftist who has the support of Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit); Jim Gavin a former GAA player and football manager for Dublin, Civil Aviation Authority bigwig, and flying instructor in the Air Corps who was picked up by Fianna Fáil as their candidate; and Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys.
Sunday 5th October saw the withdrawal of Jim Gavin. It has to be said that he looked and sounded completely out of his depth in the TV debates, performing so badly that the bookies had put him at 16-1 by Sunday morning, but the final straw was a scandal over rent overpaid by a tenant to Gavin 16 years ago and never returned. I thought Gavin always looked like a potential banana skin for Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach Micheál Martin but in the event he turned into a hot potato that left Martin with egg on his face. In retrospect it seems a very serious error of judgement to back such a weak candidate.
Apparently Martin had pushed FF members very hard to select Gavin as their candidate, even though he wasn’t a member until recently, but now they are wondering why they had been asked to endorse a dodgy landlord from outside the party when there were so many of those already in it.
So now there are only two candidates, except that the relevant electoral law does not allow a candidate to withdraw after the deadline for nominations (which was 24th September) so Jim Gavin’s name will still be on the ballot paper. It will be interesting to see how many people vote for him despite his withdrawal, as a kind of protest. They might make a difference, as might those who transfer their first choice to Heather Humphreys. I suspect many ardent FF-ers will just not vote, though. In that case it will simply be down to who wins the most first preferences.
It wasn’t – and still isn’t – obvious to me which of the two remaining candidates is favoured by these shenanigans, but it is clear what the Bookies think: odds are currently Connnolly 1/3 favourite and Humphreys 11/4. At the start of the campaign Catherine Connolly was the outsider, but she’s now odds-on favourite. She’s the only candidate whose team has canvassed me (so far)
Election Day is Friday October 24th.
And as if all that excitement weren’t enough, today was Budget Day. The reaction to that might well influence the vote for President: if it is unpopular, the anti-establishment vote might increase.
Update: it is clear from here that Gavin’s votes will be treated as valid and if he finishes third on first preferences, his transfers will be counted in the usual way.
Nominations of candidates for the next President of Ireland (Uachtarán na hÉireann) closed at 12 noon, and only three gathered enough support to be named on the ballot paper. These are Catherine Connolly (left), Jim Gavin (centre) and Heather Humphreys (right). The last time there were as few as three candidates was 1990, when Mary Robinson was elected. The last Presidential Election had six candidates.
A number of names were touted ahead of today’s deadline for nominations, some plausible and some bizarre, but most dropped out without ever getting started. That list includes Bob Geldof, Michael Flatley of Riverdance fame, Conor McGregor (a famous rapist), a man who runs a doggy-day-care business, and a lady, whose name escapes me, who used to read the weather forecast on the telly.
Last week businessperson Gareth Sheridan also dropped out, having failed to convince enought local authorities to nominate him. The threshold for this route to nomination is very low, just 4 out of 31 – 26 County Councils, three City Councils (Dublin, Galway and Cork) and two hybrids (Limerick and Waterford). Sheridan only secured two so dropped out. I never really understood why he was standing as his company is facing litigation in the USA for fraud and breach of contract, and that would have undergone relentless scrutiny during the election campaign, so I find it strange he was willing to risk that. Anyway, it doesn’t matter now; he’s a non-runner.
The last one to drop out was ultra-conservative Catholic anti-everything campaigner Maria Steen. She went for the route of nominations from members of the Oireachtas (TDs and Senators). After frantically scraping the bottom of the barrel she came up two short of the 20 needed and dropped out just before the deadline. My worry with this reactionary person was not that Ireland would end up with her as President, but that the election campaign (which will last a month) would be dominated by her airing her bigoted views.
The three remaining candidates are: Catherine Connolly (an independent TD standing as a unified leftist) who has the support of Sinn Féin, Labour, the Social Democrats and People Before Profit. Jim Gavin is a former GAA player and football manager for Dublin and flying instructor in the Air Corps who was picked up by Fianna Fáil as their candidate (although I don’t think he was a member before the campaign started); and last;y we have the Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys. I normally react with an instant “no” to FG drones, but she is a Presbyterian, whose father was a member of an Orange Order, which would be interesting for North-South politics on the island.
Maria Steen would probably have fragmented the right-wing vote and thus favoured Connolly on first preferences, but now it’s basically a choice between one left and two right. Since FF and FG are basically equivalent, they will probably mainly transfer to each other, so if Connolly is going to win she will have to do it on first preferences.
Election day (24th October) is exactly a month away. Deciding who to vote for will be as easy as one-two-three.
PS. The bookies’ odds via Oddschecker are: Humphreys 11/10 fav; Gavin 15/8; Connolly 5/2.
In the Dark 