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GALWAY INDEPENDENT TD Catherine Connolly has confirmed that she has officially reached the 20 Oireachtas nominations needed to launch a campaign for the presidency today.
She confirmed her bid on Raidió Na Gaeltachta this morning and is the second official candidate in the race for the Áras after Fine Gael confirmed yesterday that former EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness would run under the party’s banner.
She told reporters outside Leinster House this afternoon: “It’s a privilege to have the 20 nominations that are necessary to stand in the election, an absolute privilege.
“I respect every single one of those nominations, and I will do my best to live up to the challenge and the faith that they are put in me,” she added.
Connolly said she was standing “to enable people, to empower people to find their own voices, to stand up and be counted”.
She said she wants to represent the fact that there is a “different way we must deal with climate change”, global conflict and peace and the housing crisis.
“We have to stop the normalisation of war and violence. We have to stop the normalization of homelessness, we have to say that these problems are not inevitable,” she said in Dublin.
Speaking earlier, Connolly confirmed her candidacy on the Adhmhaidin programme this morning, adding that it was a very difficult decision to make and, at first, questioned her capabilities.
Speaking in Irish, Connolly said: “I have to say, I did not make this decision overnight. I’ve been struggling with this decision over the last number of months. I wasn’t able to make up my mind at first.
“I was questioning myself. ‘Who am I?’ ‘Would I be able to do this job?’, and other questions like that. I was also conscious of my level of life experience,” she added.
Connolly said, however, that she was encouraged to stand for nomination after she was advised to read emails and correspondence from supporters asking her to contest the election, which have been sent to her over the last year and a half.
Connolly has the backing of the Social Democrats, People Before Profit and a number of independent TDs and Senators.
A candidate needs the backing of 20 Oireachtas members (TDs or senators) in order to get on the ballot paper.
Connolly told the programme that both parties have confirmed they are willing to give her their support, but exact details around the campaign have to be ironed out. She said there are meetings ongoing to finalise the details.
She also explained that, for the first time in her political career, she will be relying on donations to fuel her costly national campaign.
Politicians from a raft of Dáil parties and groupings were out having their say on the presidential race at Leinster House yesterday. Connolly’s former party, Labour, is yet to decide whether it will back her or go another way.
“We will have a very frank and detailed conversation with Catherine and then a decision will be made,” Labour’s Marie Sherlock said yesterday ahead of a planned meeting with the TD.
Labour confirmed to The Journal that a consultation will take place along its membership today following the meeting, which they described as “constructive and respectful”.
The consultation period will conclude in two weeks’ time: “The [Labour] Executive Board and Parliamentary Party will meet on 31 July to discuss and agree an approach to the Presidency.”
Connolly said she respected that Labour and Sinn Féin are currently undergoing a consultation period before deciding whether to support her campaign.
Connolly spoke about her life experience and reason for declaring. She said: “I was elected in 2016 as a TD, and I spent 17 years before that on [Galway] city council.
“The thing is, I still have the same frustrations and anger over the disconnect between successive governments and the public.”
She added that she saw the same frustration and anger in the messages she received from members of the public, who she said are entirely reliant on politicians to tackle important issues, naming climate change and global conflict.
Connolly said that many messages mentioned the public’s dissatisfaction with how politicians were approaching the war in Gaza and Palestine: “People are angry and upset.
“They are pleading with us to use our voice for peace and to put an end to the horrors that are happening in our names.”
Put to her that she would not be able to speak about those issues if she held the presidency, a traditionally ceremonial and apolitical role, Connolly accepted that the role of the President is different to a TD’s.
“The most important thing to me is to always be a listening ear to everyone,” she said.
“I worked as a clinical psychologist for seven years, and then I went onto work as a barrister. From that experience, and other experiences, I can listen to differing opinions.”
“But I also learnt how to deal with that when growing up with my family in Sean Talamh,” she added, referring to the west Galway village near Lough Corrib, where she grew up.
“There were 14 of us, and we had plenty of experience with listening to one another and others and different opinions and learning that everyone was important, in my family and society.”
Connolly’s stance on foreign conflicts, particularly the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has been closely examined in the weeks leading up to today’s declaration.
It has been noted that she did not stand or applaud during portions of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s address to a joint-sitting of the Oireachtas in 2022. She has previously outlined her opposition to all wars and the global arms trade.
Addressing it today, she questioned whether the debate was seriously focusing on how much she clapped or the length of time she stood for during Zelenskyy’s address to TDs and Senators three years ago.
She said that she has never hesitated to condemn the Russian regime.
“You cannot reason what Russia has done,” she said, going on to condemn the invasion as “illegal” and calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
She said that she has growing concerns over the direction Europe is heading, in terms of its support for military action and the sale of arms internationally. She said that politicians should be using their voices to promote peace instead.
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