Raised by a single father who had seven sons and seven daughters to feed in Galway to being swept to the steps of Áras an Uachtaráin in a record-breaking electoral victory, Ireland’s new president, Catherine Connolly, has never followed the traditional script.
As a lifelong activist who preferred saving the world to doing housework, Connolly is not afraid to go against the consensus.
As part of her campaign trail, she went viral for doing keepie-uppies with local kids — a snapshot of the warmth and wit that carried her all the way to the top.
Growing up in a large family in a Galway social housing estate, Connolly naturally learnt how to listen to different voices and opinions.
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Last month, she told BBC’s Talkback programme: ‘I come from a background that put a very high value on integrity and honesty.
‘My mother died when I was young and I watched my father – the most honest man – work every single week on our behalf to bring us up.’
Connolly was only nine years old when her mother suddenly died.
The tragic death of her mother meant her widowed father, a plasterer who also took on small building jobs, had to bring up all of the children.
In interviews, Connolly commends her two older sisters, who spent most of their teenage years looking after their younger siblings.
Connolly volunteered with two Catholic lay organisations where she would bring meals-on-wheels to elderly people and clean their homes.
She recently told podcaster Síle Seoige: ‘The joke was that I was out saving the world and not doing housework at home.’
This was when she first became active in her community – something that she still carries with her today.
Connolly has always been an ally to the disabled and carers community as she stands with the campaign to scrap means testing for both Carer’s Allowance and disability payments.
In 2023, she stood and opposed the government’s attempts to introduce the Green Paper on Disability – a reform that would scrap the Work Capability Assessment and change the eligibility criteria for Personal Independence Payment.
Connolly studied for a degree in psychology with German before taking the role of clinical psychologist with a County Galway health board.
Instead of taking up a permanent role, she began doing night classes to study for a law degree. She qualified as a barrister in 1991.
Before she entered politics in 1999, in her early 40s, she married Brian McEnery and had two children.
The now former president, Michael D Higgins, encouraged Connolly to stand for the Labour Party.
One of her reasons for getting involved was to address the country’s housing shortage.
For 17 years, she served as a councillor in Galway.
She left Labour after she criticised them for not supporting her bid to run alongside Higgins in the 2007 general election.
Before finally winning a seat in 2016, she had two failed attempts to get elected to the Dáil (Irish Parliament) as an independent.
In 2020, she became the first ever woman elected to chair debates in parliament when she secured her role as Leas-Cheann Comhairle (Deputy Speaker).
During her time in this role, she surprisingly managed to unite opposition parties against the sitting government’s candidate.
She united them again with her presidential bid, securing the support of Sinn Féin, the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and Labour.
During her presidential campaign, she faced some criticism and judgment.
Heather Humphreys, her rival, accused her of hypocrisy for criticising repossessions while also representing banks as a barrister in the past.
Connolly also had to defend her choice of hiring Ursula Ní Shionnain, who had recently been released from jail for firearms offences.
She insisted no rules were broken.
Her 2018 trip to Syria was also judged as she came into contact with an armed supporter of Bashar al-Assad, the former president of Syria.
She insisted her group had no control over who attended the tour, and the trip was simply a mission to highlight the dangerous plight of refugees.
Despite these challenges during her campaign, she had a landslide victory, securing more than 914,000 first preference votes – a record in Irish presidential election history.
Now that Connolly is president, she has many promises she would like to fulfill.
She told the BBC that Gaza was at the top of her list of concerns, as well as Irish unity.
In her acceptance speech, she said: ‘I will be a president who listens and reflects and who speaks when it’s necessary.
‘I will be a voice for peace, a voice that builds on our policy of neutrality, a voice that articulates the existential threat posed by climate change, and a voice that recognises the tremendous work being done the length and breadth of the country.’
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