The left united and it worked. Catherine Connolly will be inaugurated as Ireland’s 10th president and will spend the next seven years in Áras an Uachtarán.
In last week’s Presidential Election, she won a massive 63% of the vote nationally. In Laois it was over 65%.
Among Catherine Connolly’s supporters at the Laois count centre in Portlaoise was local Sinn Féin Senator Maria McCormack. There was also a team of Sinn Féin supporters tallying alongside local Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil members as well as Independent TD Brian Stanley and some of his supporters.
And while the Sinn Féin supporters were joyous having backed Catherine Connolly, was there any element that saw it as a missed opportunity for Sinn Féin? Could a strong Sinn Féin candidate have won it out themselves?
“We could have had,” said Senator McCormack. “(But) we are very, very happy with our decision to back Catherine Connolly and I have absolutely no regrets.
“I really feel she is the best woman for the job and I am just thrilled to work with her now and she goes on to the Áras. We couldn’t be happier.
“We’re absolutely thrilled. I think it was a great opportunity where we showed the power of a left alliance and the left opposition coming together and it really showed that the people of Ireland came out strong for a candidate independent of government, independent of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael.
“We can see here it’s an absolute landslide for Catherine Connolly and we are thrilled with the result.”
What attracted her to Catherine Connolly in the first place?
“She is a really genuine, lovely, lovely person and of course I love her grá for the Irish language.
“I think that’s really important in a president and I also love how she stands up for people with disabilities which is obviously an area that’s very close to my heart.
“She’s so qualified for the job. She’s a barrister, she has been a psychologist. The woman is incredibly talented and she will make the most fantastic president.”
Given that Sinn Féin were the last left-leaning party to get behind the campaign, had there been much to-ing and fro-ing in the background before they came to that decision?
“We were back and forward about running our own candidate but it’s very hard to consider to put a candidate up against Catherine Connolly when she shared so much of our values.
“One of our main priorities is to unite our Ireland and as we can see in Catherine Connolly’s campaign she came out really strong on Irish unity and that is a vision for her as well.
“We can see the power of the united opposition and that is so important now. We see from listening to people on the doors they are absolutely sick and tired of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael so it’s really important rather than divide the left that we come together.
“Overall when it came down from it everyone in Sinn Féin wanted to support Catherine Connolly and we got behind her.”
Can the united left now keep this agreement together going forward and build on the momentum from this campaign?
“There will always be areas where we won’t agree and like with any coalition as we’ll call it there will be different priorities and different values but I think overall it’s really important that we’re stuck together on the main points.
“Of course the Presidential Election is different to the General Election but as we have found through the different motions that have come through the Dáil and the Seanad in the last couple of months we can see that a lot of our visions are the same and we hope to try and protect that as much as we can.”
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