DUBLIN — Ireland has a new left-wing president who has been sharply critical of Israel — and Catherine Connolly wants to push the limits of what is supposed to be a ceremonial head of state.
At her inauguration ceremony at Dublin Castle, Connolly told an audience of government leaders past and present that her victory in the Oct. 24 election demonstrated Ireland wants a new political direction — one at odds, in many respects, with the country’s center-right government. She pledged to provide that counterweight in her coming seven-year term, using a position that can wield soft power on the world stage.
“The president should be a unifying president — a steady hand, yes, but also a catalyst for change, reflecting our desire for a republic that lives up to its name,” Connolly told a ceremony featuring harpists and Uilleann pipers, military bands and a 21-cannon salute, as well as prayers from the leaders of every religious denomination.
Connolly didn’t explicitly mention Israel or Gaza in what was, nonetheless, an unexpectedly political speech that twice called out the evils of “genocide” — barely disguised code for the independent socialist’s previous denunciations of Israel. The International Court of Justice is currently considering allegations of genocide against Israel over its conduct in Gaza, allegations adamantly rejected by that state.
Overall, Connolly’s painstakingly scripted inaugural address sought to pose an immediate first test of the boundaries of an office that has no role in day-to-day government and is supposed to be above politics.
‘Diplomatic solutions’
Connolly delivered her remarks sitting beside Prime Minister Micheál Martin and Foreign Minister Simon Harris, who hold the real reins of power as the leaders of Ireland’s perennial middle-ground parties of government, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.
She noted that her inauguration coincided with the 107th anniversary of the ending of the First World War. Ireland fought in that war as part of the U.K. but won de facto independence from Britain in 1922, remained neutral in World War II, has kept out of NATO, and maintains only a minuscule military focused on United Nations-approved missions. The country today hosts more than 80,000 Ukrainian refugees from Russia’s invasion, higher than the EU average, but supplies only non-lethal aid to Ukraine.
Connolly described a modern Ireland committed to pacifism shaped by its devastating famine in the mid-19th century and its 1919-21 War of Independence from Britain.
“Given our history, the normalization of war and genocide has never been and will never be acceptable to us,” she said, describing Ireland as “particularly well placed to lead and articulate alternative diplomatic solutions to conflict and war.”
“Indeed our experience of colonization and resistance, of a catastrophic man-made famine and forced emigration, gives us a lived understanding of dispossession, hunger and war, and a mandate for Ireland to lead,” she said.
Connolly offered other veiled criticisms of a coalition government that, since taking office earlier this year following a hard-fought 2024 election, has struggled to address a housing crisis, the country’s top political issue. Martin and Harris also have stepped back from climate-change commitments made during their previous, more left-leaning government in alliance with the Green Party.
Connolly — whose candidacy was backed by the Greens and several other opposition parties of the left — said she had won “a powerful mandate” to promote the idea of an Ireland “where everyone is valued and diversity is cherished, where sustainable solutions are urgently implemented, and where a home is a fundamental human right.”
Against expectations, Connolly delivered most of her nationally televised speech in English, not in Ireland’s comparatively little-used mother tongue of Irish. She had made her fluency in Ireland’s official first language a significant selling point in her presidential campaign.
Mary McAuliffe, a University College Dublin historian, explained why.
“A huge majority of people wouldn’t understand a whole speech in Irish,” McAuliffe said, “including I must say, myself.”