Veteran Brussels figure and left-wing critic vie for Irish presidency

While McGuinness will benefit from early-frontrunner energy as Ireland’s top figure on the European stage, her Europhile and center-right Fine Gael party has never won Ireland’s presidency.

The 66-year-old former agriculture journalist, who confirmed her candidacy on Tuesday, has wanted to be president since at least 2011, when she failed to win Fine Gael’s nomination on her first try. McGuinness has just finished two well-regarded decades in Brussels as an Irish MEP, and served from 2020 to 2024 as the European Commission’s financial services chief.

Her record of sensible competence might not count for much in an Ireland that typically elects pragmatic, center-ground coalition governments while seeking out more idealistic presidents who can moralize from the sidelines.

In that vein, the ideologically closer successor to Higgins would be Connolly, a 68-year-old socialist lawmaker who has represented Galway West as an independent opposition lawmaker since 2016. She quit the left-of-center Labour Party a decade before that, when she was barred from seeking a parliamentary seat in competition with Higgins.

Connolly, who launched her election campaign Wednesday, specializes in anti-government speeches delivered with high-minded indignance and often in Ireland’s official but relatively little-used native tongue.

A potential vote-winner for Connolly could be her trenchant criticism of Israel in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip and its support for West Bank settlers. She has also expressed hostility to NATO following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

According to the source: politico.eu.