A successful 2025 presidential election campaign is likely to demand a candidate who can command support within party politics but still foster an identity that exists outside of it.
A cascade of nominations for Heather Humphreys from the majority of the Fine Gael parliamentary party started rolling in on Tuesday as soon as she announced her intention to run. But the most vital endorsements came days ago from Independent politicians Michael Healy-Rae, Seán Canney and Noel Grealish. This attracted significant attention in Fine Gael, which knows very few of its party members would be able to attract such support.
This is why the current tally at the time of writing of more than 30 endorsements for Humphreys and fewer than 10 for Seán Kelly does a disservice to the MEP and former GAA chief. The Munster vote-getter is well respected within his party, and it wasn’t without some anguish that some of his party colleagues declared for Humphreys instead. But the momentum was going one way. The buoyant mood in Fine Gael this week is that of a party that thinks it’s found its first ever president of Ireland.
Fine Gael was planning to formally launch Mairead McGuinness’s campaign in the days before the National Ploughing Championships in Tullamore that will kick off in the third week of September. The campaign launch date will be kept the same for the new Fine Gael candidate – in all likelihood Humphreys – which the party is presenting as proof that it hasn’t lost any time. The time that elapsed between McGuinness dropping out and the party finding two new candidates was so brief, Tánaiste Simon Harris never once found himself in front of a microphone having to account for what his party’s plan was now.
READ MORE
Though the nomination process will technically continue for another week, Fine Gael is already actively planning how its campaign could be altered to suit Humphreys. Some elements of the McGuinness campaign can be transferred to Humphreys who, like the former MEP, shares a penchant for an agricultural show. But under Humphreys, the campaign would shift more towards the themes of community and a shared island. Think Tidy Towns and tolerance.
Fine Gael is expecting opposition to a Humphreys campaign to try to tie her to Government failings in housing and health over her 10 years at the cabinet table. This was borne out in a press release from Sinn Féin on Tuesday evening, which said “Heather Humphreys will have to account for 14 years of Fine Gael failure”.
Humphreys will face tough questions on aspects of her government record, including her role as director of elections for the failed 2024 referendums, a Green Paper on disability reform that was so controversial it had to be withdrawn, and her reported opposition to an increase in jobseeker’s allowance. But Fine Gael figures are confident that Humphreys’s time as a minister was “very impactful but not that controversial” given she never held a portfolio such as health or housing.
If its candidate is Humphreys, Fine Gael has enough humility to know that her strength will be that she doesn’t seem all that Fine Gael. There used to be a running joke at cabinet that the former minister got on better with Fianna Fáil than she did with her own party colleagues.
The reason Humphreys attracted so much support within Fine Gael’s parliamentary party is because politicians recognised her ability to attract support from all kinds of people outside it. For example, earlier this year she sat down for a podcast interview with former president Mary McAleese and broadcaster Mary Kennedy. As Humphreys was talking about how much she likes playing the piano, McAleese pointedly interrupted her: “There’s a great Steinway in the Áras.”
