What we learned after spending three days with President Catherine Connolly in London
What the glass come off: President Catherine Connolly at the Irish Embassy in London. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/PA
President Catherine Connolly has a tell when she is about to go off-script and drift away from the remarks written on the page in front of her.
When the glasses come off, the journalists in the room spring to attention.
Throughout her three-day visit to England this week, she made several quips about her specs, telling the crowd at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith at her first engagement she was “struggling between glasses and no glasses, and the lights”.
“I’m putting it all down to that, and not to the optician or my reluctance to wear glasses permanently,” said President Connolly.
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Minutes later, she deviated from the script for the first time.
“Historically, modern-day immigration was driven by economic factors, with large numbers leaving Ireland for London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, and elsewhere. This occurred in waves,” she said.
This part was scripted; the next part was not.
“We know that from the 19th century and the 20th century, and unfortunately today as well, we have people leaving our shores for various reasons, some of them for lack of housing.”
She faltered somewhat during the unscripted remarks, appearing unsure of what to say or mindful she should not deviate from the script.
The trend continued in the Irish embassy in London on Monday evening.
Following a comment about her “spéclaí”, and with more confidence than that morning, she gave off-the-cuff comments, just hours after it emerged her sister, Margaret Connolly, had been detained while sailing on an aid flotilla to Gaza.
President Connolly said Irish and English voices must unite to say, “normalising war is never acceptable, normalising slaughter is never acceptable”.
By Tuesday afternoon, the glasses were on and off the president’s face with gusto as she addressed the London Irish Centre in Camden.
The hub is the heart of the Irish community in north-west London and has been for the last 70 years.
It is currently planning a mass renovation, with President Connolly saying several times she would be happy to return when it opens in September 2028.
“If you complete it in two years, you're going to be an inspiration to many builders and local authorities in Ireland,” she quipped.
She was moved by some of the people she had met in the centre, including survivors of institutional abuse who had moved to England during a period in Ireland that was unkind, unwelcoming, and unforgiving.
Unscripted, once again, President Connolly started to talk about her work with survivors.
“My own life has been entangled with survivors on a personal level and a professional level for almost all of my adult life,” she said.
“I had been given the privilege of knowing it from every angle. As a domestic who cleaned in an industrial school where my own family had been, to going back as a psychologist, to working as a barrister, and representing survivors in the redress board, to then taking a role as a TD, where I watched the unfolding of apologies and waited for action.”
The glasses went back on for a while before coming back off later in the speech.
She was off script, but in the space of just 24 hours, she was far more confident in doing so.
Again, she was talking about emigration, and the half a million people who left Ireland for the UK in the 1950s and 1980s, and how difficult it had been for them to assimilate.
Although she would not mention him by name, President Connolly referenced a Dáil speech from Fine Gael TD Dinny McGinley in 1991 about “disturbing reports” regarding the Irish in Britain, and how they were among the most “disadvantaged and discriminated against ethnic minorities in Britain”, while also dying younger than any other group.
“The official response from Ireland was a little slow in catching up, to put it mildly, in relation to that exodus from our country,” said President Connolly.
“I leave that for the politicians to meditate on.”
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When Michael D Higgins was president, it was more likely than not he was going to rip up his entire speech and ad-lib. The longer he lived in Áras an Uachtaráin, the more likely this was to happen.
President Connolly marked six months as president last week. The trip to England was only her second overseas visit, following a visit to Spain in April.
Throughout the presidential election campaign in October and November, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael warned Catherine Connolly could not be trusted, and she would be coming out with all sorts of statements that would damage Ireland on the international stage.
While she is still finding her feet in the Áras, she has come nowhere close to causing the diplomatic damage predicted by those in Government.
In fact, the issues President Connolly spoke about off script during her trip to the UK — housing, institutional abuse survivors, and international law — were the same ones she addressed passionately during her time in the Dáil.
She is no longer as forceful as she once was. In many respects, she cannot be.
One thing that has not changed, however, is her aversion to the media.
During the three-day trip, President Connolly did just one press engagement with reporters, lasting three minutes and 10 seconds.
Asked by this reporter if she was disappointed the Occupied Territories Bill — a piece of legislation that she campaigned so strongly on — had not been passed by the Government, she did not bite.
She said very diplomatically this was a matter for the Dáil.
As she walked around the Chelsea Flower Show, she spoke gently to the exhibitors, to the ire of the journalists stretching across flowerbeds and fountains with phones in hand hoping to catch a stray word.
The personality that endeared voters during the election is still very much there.
Following a performance by local musicians at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, President Connolly was invited on stage to take a photograph.
There was one hitch: There were no stairs.
As she placed her hands firmly on the stage, she joked she could hoist herself up.
“She could actually,” one journalist muttered.
This endearment was visible throughout her three-day trip to the UK, including her old alma mater, Leeds University.
Back at the Irish Cultural Centre, comedian Dara Ó Briain exchanged pleasantries with the Irish media standing on the footpath outside.
Asked if he would be at the embassy reception that evening, he said he would have been honoured to attend, but “wild horses could not keep” him from the Emirates Stadium as Arsenal played Burnley.
Luckily for the Bray man, President Connolly has already invited herself back to London when the renovations at the London Irish Centre are completed in two years’ time.
Perhaps by this stage, she will have ditched the glasses — and the scripts — altogether.
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