After a stifling start, battle for the Áras finally starts to get interesting

Up to now, it's all been about what might happen because nothing much was happening. But this week it all changed

Gareth Sheridan at the Shelbourne hotel, where he announced his intention to run for the presidential election. Picture: Gareth Chaney

Six days ago, you could have been forgiven for forgetting that there was a presidential race. It’s understandable, too.

While there were two candidates who we knew would be on the ballot, they had been keeping a low profile for July and the first half of August.

Beyond that, the greatest amount of noise around the election itself had come from candidates who had little to no chance of being anywhere near the ballot itself and whose motivations for wanting to be president were either unclear or misguided.

This meant that the coverage of the election has centred around what might happen, because nothing much was actually happening.

On the Sinn Féin end, the speculation has been around who it might run, if anyone, and for Fianna Fáil, basically any person in the party’s orbit has been suggested, short of the ghost of Albert Reynolds.

For Micheál Martin’s party, a recent poll suggested that Bertie Ahern was its best bet, topping a list of potential candidates. That is, of course, if you ignore that the former taoiseach commanded just 12% of support in a field that also included political neophytes in Ulster University professor Deirdre Heenan and Ireland’s greatest ever target man, Niall Quinn.

Public interest finally ignited

The race itself, however, has finally sparked to life following a chaotic week that has both blown the election open and ignited public interest.

Last Sunday, pharmaceutical entrepreneur Gareth Sheridan announced that he will join the race for the presidency, telling the Sunday Independent that he hoped to make housing and emigration the focal points of his campaign.

However, the largely unknown businessman hasn’t upended the status quo as much as he might have liked in a tumultuous first week of the campaign.

By the time his launch came on Thursday, he was already battling multiple fires. 

First, it was revealed that Independent senator Sharon Keogan had been helping him to “canvass support” among “the independent council block across the country”. 

She introduced him to councillors at a conference held in Limerick in April, and they have been in “regular contact”, he said, though he moved to distance himself from her politics. 

Ms Keogan has been criticised for comments that suggested there was an “organised” LGBT+ “takeover” of society, among other incidents.

Later, the Irish Examiner would reveal that Sheridan’s mother, an early director of his Nutriband company, had lodged concerns about a Dublin social housing development “at the behest of her employer”, who was the developer behind the housing project. This was as well as the fact that an investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had culminated in a personal fine of $25,000.

This was all before his launch on Thursday, at which Sheridan accused people in the “inner circle” of his company’s ex-chairman and former presidential candidate Sean Gallagher of leaking information to the press about him.

In an extraordinary intervention, Sheridan stated that there had been a “coordinated attack” on him.

Mairead McGuinness pulled out of the race on Thursday, leaving Fine Gael with no clear candidate.

All of this would have been extraordinary enough, and a suddenly energised political journalist corps was just about getting its head around it when the biggest shock of the entire campaign thus far landed.

With no warning or speculation, the presumptive front-runner and one of only two candidates on the ballot at the moment, Mairead McGuinness quit the race. 

A decision taken heavily on medical grounds, a statement said as Fine Gael colleagues reeled. 

Ms McGuinness’s withdrawal leaves the Fine Gael nomination contest — which never actually happened — back open, but with time at a premium, the party may ask a former minister to dust off their political boots and return to the field.

Heather Humphreys, Simon Coveney, and Frances Fitzgerald were all the immediate names mentioned, though nobody was quick to put their hands up, and Frances Fitzgerald has again ruled herself out.

If a week is a long time in politics, this past seven days have been an age.