Fergus Finlay: The nomination process has to change before the next presidential election

Connolly’s victory was decisive but exposed deep flaws in Ireland’s presidential process — and the anger now consuming public debate

Catherine Connolly with her husband Brian McEnery in Dublin Castle after her victory in the presidential election. Picture: Eamonn Farrell

First and foremost, president-elect Connolly deserves massive congratulations. She ran a powerful and vibrant campaign on her own terms, and she won an astonishing victory. 

Presidential elections, because they are essentially about character and not policy, are always minefields. Our next president succeeded in dodging every potential mine — instead they blew up one of her opponents.

I reckon the vast majority of the people of her country really wish her well now, as do I. The election is over, and I hope the next seven years will be as happy, as exciting and as fulfilling for her as it was for her immediate predecessors.

But here’s the thing she has to remember. Just barely more than a quarter of the electorate voted for her. If you divide her vote arithmetically by the size of the electorate, the answer is 25.29%. That’s not great.

Yes, she has a full and unqualified democratic mandate, but what a figure like that means is that she cannot just afford to be in office. She must grow in office. She can’t just talk about being an inclusive president, she must prove that she is one. That’s her great challenge now.

The rest of us face a much bigger challenge. If presidential elections continue to be run on the same basis as this one, the office will become utterly devalued and meaningless. Twelve per cent of the electorate voted for Heather Humphreys. And 2.8% of the electorate voted for Jim Gavin (I had to double-check that figure, it was so small). Add them all together and that means almost exactly 6 out of every 10 voters didn’t bother to vote or spoiled their votes.

That’s a monumental failure and there are two reasons. Process and anger.

Let’s talk about the process. I realise you could fill several doctoral theses with reasons why the process failed so badly. From my perspective you need to start with the failed campaigns.

Humphreys' campaign

I know Heather Humphreys and I like and respect her. But she was sent off in this campaign with no identity, no purpose. She hadn’t internalised any solid sense of why — why she wanted to be president, what she would do with the office, how she’d be different. 

Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys casts her vote with the help of her grandaughter at Killeevan Central National School in Newbliss, Co Monaghan.

And she was surrounded by people who thought all you had to do was keep attacking her opponent for practicing as a barrister and doing the things all barristers do. It blew up in their faces.

And then there was the hapless Jim Gavin. He ran a campaign which produced only one winner — the man to whom he owed money, and who eventually got paid. It used to be said that the worst and most chaotic campaign in Irish political history was that run by Brian Lenihan with the help of Charlie Haughey in 1989. Lenihan still topped the poll on the first count, Gavin lasted a fortnight.

As a result, both leaders of the parties in government have been damaged, Micheál Martin probably irreparably. The only thing he has going for him now is the lack of an obvious successor. He may end up being remembered as a decent and honourable man doomed by an appalling error of judgement.

But apart from the lack of leadership, the lack of choice had a huge impact. I have always been one of the people who said the nomination process was grand, tough but grand. 

I’ve changed my mind. It has to change before the next presidential election. The people are sovereign in this election — the president chosen is theirs. But they have to be given a better choice

Both the Taoiseach and Tánaiste owe the people of Ireland an apology, without any disrespect to the winner of this election, for the way it was run and the lack of opportunity for serious people, with their own vision of the presidency, to join the contest. The best way to proceed now, as soon as the dust is settled, is to establish a Citizen’s Assembly to ensure that the next election is much more open, while preserving the core principle that the office must belong to the people.

Fixing the process should be easy — there are a dozen different ways in which candidates can be democratically tested in a nomination process. A fixed number of councillors from anywhere in the country, for instance, as opposed to local authorities. A certain number of recognised nominating bodies, representing workers, employers, farmers, sport, culture and more.

Ugly scenes

Fixing the process is one thing, Fixing the anger will take a lot more work.

I took part in a debate on Virgin Media with Declan Ganley the other night. Well, not so much a debate. He likes to shout a lot, so everything becomes a shouting match. It was supposed to be about his “spoil the vote” campaign and website, but it took place against the background of the ugly scenes unfolding at the Citywest IPAS centre, where organised thugs appeared to be trying to attack everyone who was living there.

The entire thing, Mr Ganley said, was the fault of the government that had allowed a criminal to remain in Ireland and attack a child. I tried to explain that whatever these people were trying to attack, there was a suspect in custody who was nowhere near the IPAS centre, and that there were no doubt there were children there who were being traumatised by what was happening outside their gates. He wasn’t having any of that. It was uncontrolled and rampant immigration that had led to so much anger in the country.

Then we got on to another of his pet peeves, the (allegedly) billions and billions of public money that gets spent on unaccountable, highly paid, and no doubt corrupt non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Ireland. It’s twaddle, this stuff, but it doesn’t stop him and many others being angry about it and using it to whip up more anger.

There are a hundred reasons behind the anger — real reasons and whipped-up reasons

The truth is that immigrants aren’t to blame for our housing crisis, and they’re not to blame for the deficiencies in our health service (in fact, if it weren’t for thousands of immigrants in our health service it would be on its knees).

The real reasons are all failures of public policy — that’s undeniable. The real answer to that, especially in a wealthy country, is much better delivery of services. If people who saw themselves as leaders stopped spending their money on spoil the vote campaigns and started getting stuck into the search for real solutions, they could make a hell of a difference. But solutions, I guess, are a lot more boring than hatred.

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We do need a real debate about how a rich country protects its children from harm and helps them to grow. About how older people are enabled to live independently and with dignity. About how the dream of an affordable and decent home could become a right for young families. Our systems (though they are not corrupt) worry much more about processes and strictures, all the reasons you shouldn’t do things, than they do about delivery and outcomes. That’s something that an inclusive president’s quiet influence, never mind power, could help to lead.