The Irish Question: The Country’s Presidential Election Could Revive an Old Crisis

Surprises have shaken up the presidential election in Ireland in the run-up to voting on Oct. 24. 

Mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor withdrew from the race last month after he faced an uphill battle to appear on the ballot, ESPN reported. Still, he has vowed to run again, saying the electoral process was undemocratic. 

Then Jim Gavin, a former Dublin soccer team manager who was the nominee for the ruling centrist Fianna Fáil political party, pulled out of the race after revelations that he owed one of his tenants nearly $4,000 in overpaid rent, as Ireland’s Journal explained. 

Because he decided to leave so late in the process, Gavin will still appear on the ballot. But he has said he won’t serve, setting the stage for a constitutional crisis, Politico added. 

In the meantime, Gavin’s move has become a political headache for Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, who fought with other Fianna Fáil party leaders to back Gavin, a relative unknown, but now appears weak given how his pick was a dud. 

One of the two remaining candidates is Catherine Connolly, a former lawmaker and political independent who has the support of leftwing parties like Sinn Féin, the Labor Party, and the Greens. The other is Heather Humphreys, a former lawmaker and cabinet minister, of the center-right Fine Gael party that is part of Martin’s coalition government, according to Irish public broadcaster RTÉ. 

Both could be considered controversial. 

Irish politicians routinely express their desire to unite the southern, republican part of the island that is Ireland, a European Union member, with the northern section, which is part of the United Kingdom. But unity advocates leaders are pushing Connolly to use her presidential power to force a referendum on the issue if she wins, noted Anphoblacht, a news outlet affiliated with Sinn Féin, traditionally the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, a group – commonly described as terrorists – that opposes British presence on the island. 

At the same time, Humphreys is a Presbyterian from one of three northern Irish counties that are not part of British Northern Ireland, Queen’s University Belfast politics lecturer Peter John McLoughlin explained in the Conversation. She also backs unity, but her grandfather signed the Ulster Covenant in 1912, where Protestant leaders pledged to resist Irish rule at all costs. Some signers inked their names in blood. 

A referendum to unify Ireland would surely create a crisis in the UK and perhaps Europe at large, especially at a time when governments like Spain are fighting independence movements within their borders (read: Catalonia) and Russia is seeking to revive its imperial control in Ukraine and elsewhere, the Guardian argued. 

“Ireland’s new president will have to help guide the country into the 2030s,”
it wrote. “The path through those years is not looking easy. The outcome of this contest will matter.”