After the count was concluded a week ago, Catherine Connolly and her team went to a private room allocated to them in Dublin Castle.
There they had a call with incumbent President Michael D Higgins, before decamping to O’Donoghue’s on Merrion Row to celebrate her victory.
But with that historic achievement secured, president-elect Connolly is embarking on a new journey. Amid briefings and meetings, she must decide on everything from the music for the inauguration to the key themes of her first speech as president – coming in at a snappy three to five minutes during the ceremony.
For Connolly, everything from staffing appointments to preparations for handling her diplomatic and constitutional duties must be thrashed out – all the while considering what her presidency will be; and how the political programme which expresses it will be structured.
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Meanwhile, many audiences are theorising on this very question – looking for clues on what the Connolly presidency will look like.
Government sources push back strongly on any suggestion that preparations are being made on the presumption of an antagonistic relationship with the president.
Within the Government and the Civil Service there is an abiding view that, while campaigning, Connolly repeatedly and explicitly acknowledged the constitutional and conventional constraints on her office, and an expectation that she will adhere to them.
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This message is also being fed back from embassies in Dublin – that, in the words of one diplomat stationed here, Connolly is not a “thoughtless firebrand populist” whose political mission will be to attack or undermine the Government at every hand’s turn.
Nonetheless, that exists alongside an acknowledgment that the Michael D Higgins era created a template for an activist presidency – and that Connolly has a mandate for one – something which her own camp is also aware of. When a desire to make her presence felt aligns with her view of the constraints of her office, expectations are that she will not be shy about doing so.
Her presidency will take shape not just through public pronouncements, but also through how the office is run and what her decisions signal. For example, it is expected that there will be a big emphasis on the Irish language in the Áras.
It is understood that she will likely look for people within the President’s Establishment (the department which runs the presidency, composed of civil servants and some personal appointees of the president) who have Irish, and inasmuch as possible, for it to be the working language of the Áras.
She will also have to decide on her appointments – usually an adviser and personal secretary, with campaign manager Béibhinn O’Connor expected to accompany her to the Áras, at least initially.
There is already a working document for Connolly’s first 100 days in office: inevitably, it will contain a lot of procedural or constitutionally mandated work, chiefly the now-traditional pre-Christmas rush of Bills for scrutiny before they are signed into law.
There will be diplomatic niceties to attend to – letters of congratulations to acknowledge and phone calls with leaders from other jurisdictions. Much of this will be unremarkable, but some will also be closely pored over, including East-West and North-South relations.
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For example, there are long-standing plans for a State visit by King Charles. Such an invitation would come from the president on the advice of the Government.
It is understood that Connolly’s team are considering that First Minister Michelle O’Neill – who is, of course, not a head of state – may be among her first phone calls. She has also discussed her desire to visit the North, which would prompt discussions on protocol (although Higgins did travel to the North during his tenure, so this should not be insurmountable).
Observers are watchful of who she appoints to her Council of State: seven positions on this consultative body are made by the president directly, the remainder being senior figures from politics and the judiciary, or former office holders.
Connolly is said to be mindful that she will have to live with her appointees for seven years – and that they reflect her own priorities. Those with a background in disabilities and the Irish language are likely to be represented, as will expertise in international human rights law.
The pace at which the appointments are made will also be watched – swift appointments, some speculate, could presage preparation for convening the council soon, something which is done when the constitutionality of a piece of legislation is being considered. That could be an early indication that she may lean into that process and “flex those muscles”, in the words of one official.
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The question of travel outside the State will also emerge – which can only be undertaken with the permission of Government. A more active presidency is expected, especially when compared with the post-Covid Higgins. Observers wonder how a request to travel to Palestine would be received – or, jokingly, Moscow.
Mandarins in the Department of Foreign affairs are said to be particularly fretful of whether pronouncements might cause them problems – particularly given her commentary on European powers’ rearming, which earned a campaign-trail diplomatic intervention from the German ambassador.
There is, according to one person who served in a senior Government role, a reality that comments from any political figure – president, Taoiseach or ministers – which rile another country have real-world consequences.
Unbunching a situation can eat up valuable diplomatic time, which shuffles other business off the agenda in important meetings: time is spent, instead “trying to explain away” comments. One example from the recent past, this person offers, was Higgins’s comments at the Young Scientist Exhibition where he admonished Nato’s calls for increased military spending, which are said to have drawn ire from Central and eastern Europe.
Given her background as an outspoken critic of Government, how Connolly executes her duties will be viewed through the frame of her relationship with the Coalition. There are, in the assessment of one senior official, two interdependent questions: what does she do, and how will the Government react.
Aside from their formal duties, the president has significant latitude to construct their own programme – ranging from what events they decide to attend, to who they invite to the Áras.
Each has the capacity to bring focus on a particular area, so the ambition and scope of presidential initiatives will also be important. The president-elect intends to make good on her campaign trail commitment to have people with disabilities as the first guests to the Áras – the aim being this side of Christmas.
Connolly has also committed to a presidential initiative on disabled citizens and care, including a forum of people with lived experience and public dialogues – but also an annual report on the state of care in Ireland, which would give “visibility to real experiences, good practices and evidence of progress”.
While much in the proposal is unremarkable for a president, that last point has raised eyebrows. Anything that could be seen as an explicit or implicit comment on policy effectiveness, which in turn could lead to criticism of the Government, would be “getting into a contested space very quickly,” in the view of one senior civil servant. If such a report strayed into questions of money or resourcing that could become a “serious problem”, assesses another official.
Much of this can only be worked out in real time, but the Government has options: it can acquiesce, or play for time – some requests are said to simply go without response, for example. The Higgins and Robinson presidencies have left their mark – the Government knows the political dividend from going toe-to-toe with a popular president can be limited.
“The Government gave Michael D a lot of latitude and didn’t confront him because they wanted an easy life,” says one official.
However, the Government can hit back: most recently, it disowned comments from President Higgins on excluding Israel from the UN – seen by some as a highly significant marking of turf which deserved more attention than it got. The Government can also work the back channels through the Civil Service – formally this operates from the secretary general to the Government to the secretary general to the President, with the former often carrying messages on behalf of the wider Civil Service.
It can at times be a clearing house for tensions that mean conflict between the Government and the president is less likely, or less likely to spill out during the Taoiseach’s private dialogues with the president held under Article 28 of the Constitution – occasions where the president can raise anything, including wide-spanning policy issues.
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There are also institutional constraints to the office of the president: the vast majority of those working there are career civil servants as opposed to political operatives with a political agenda. Furthermore, it leans heavily on the Departments of the Taoiseach and of Foreign Affairs. It would, confides one former senior office holder, be “very easy to sideline a president and fob them off” in that context.
After the tide that swept Connolly into office, the contours of her presidency will emerge in the weeks and months ahead. At the inception of that presidency, the prospect of open conflict between the Áras, the mandarins and the Government can be overplayed: but as all sides feel their way into the seven-year term, they will be watching each other closely.
