{"id":90259,"date":"2025-09-28T06:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T06:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/90259\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T06:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T06:36:13","slug":"he-wasnt-generous-towards-her-catherine-connolly-and-michael-d-higginss-fraught-history-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/90259\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He wasn\u2019t generous towards her:\u2019 Catherine Connolly and Michael D Higgins\u2019s fraught history \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Often in politics, your closest ally can also be your greatest rival. So it was for Michael D Higgins<\/a> and Catherine Connolly<\/a> in the spring of 2007, when the Labour<\/a> veteran and the party\u2019s rising star locked horns in Galway West.<\/p>\n

Having joined Labour just after the 1997 general election, a campaign in which her brother Peter had canvassed for Higgins, Connolly appeared to be Higgins\u2019s appointed successor in Galway<\/a> city.<\/p>\n

Elected to Galway City Council on her first attempt in 1999, Connolly was moved by Labour to the ultraconservative south ward for the 2004 election; she became the first left-leaning politician to be elected among the leafy suburbs of Salthill and Knocknacarra.<\/p>\n

It was a seismic election for Galway.<\/p>\n

Largely on the back of Connolly\u2019s personal popularity, Labour brought home a record four councillors, including her sister Colette.<\/p>\n

This, alongside breakthrough elections for the Green Party<\/a> and Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a>, heralded the end of generations of Fianna F\u00e1il<\/a> and Fine Gael <\/a>dominance in the city.<\/p>\n

But for Connolly, that was just the start. She was determined to test herself on the national stage. However, it was not to be in the 2007 general election \u2013 or, at least, not as a Labour candidate. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Catherine Connolly\u2019s \u00c1ras campaign stalls on thorny question of HamasOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The decision by Labour not to put her on the ballot for Galway West <\/b>prompted Connolly to leave the party and embark on an ultimately successful career as an Independent.<\/p>\n

Former Green Party senator Niall \u00d3 Brolch\u00e1in, who contested both the 2004 local and 2007 general elections in the same constituency as Connolly, said Higgins \u201cdidn\u2019t have a generous bone in his body\u201d when it came to Connolly.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a tough politician. She doesn\u2019t mince her words and she is well able to play politics. No more than Michael D,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe had the courage to go Independent. She wanted to run as a second [Labour] candidate and Michael D wouldn\u2019t have it. She left the party as a result of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn\u2019t in Labour obviously but I knew them all very well. There was a lot of fallout, but they didn\u2019t fall out completely. I think there was mutual respect between them. I think, to be honest, Michael D had fought hard himself to get elected. There wasn\u2019t a generous bone in Michael D\u2019s body. I think he would have been afraid that Catherine would have taken his seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Connolly secured just 2,000 first-preference votes in that election (the quota was 9,183), \u00d3 Brolch\u00e1in believes that figure would have been much higher if she had been Michael D\u2019s running mate. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0If Northerners had a vote, Catherine Connolly would be our next presidentOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was never like Garret FitzGerald, who would have taken a hit himself to try and get two seats,\u201d he said. \u201cMichael D came up the hard way and he was damn well going to fight for himself ahead of anybody else. He wasn\u2019t generous towards Catherine. He didn\u2019t bring her forward in the way that she might have liked. Was there fallout? There was, but not too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesman for President Higgins declined to comment on those remarks. <\/p>\n

\"MichaelMichael D Higgins and Catherine Connolly taking part in a Galway Alliance Against War march in 2003. Photograph: Joe Shaughnessy <\/p>\n

Connolly grew up in a Galway that is very different from the Galway of today. One of 14 siblings, the daughter of a carpenter and shipbuilder, she was reared in the working-class neighbourhood of Shantalla on the city\u2019s west side.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Michael D Higgins, the wily old leftie, has always been a supreme politicianOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

John McDonagh, a childhood neighbour of the family and Connolly\u2019s director of elections during her first campaign in 1999, said she showed early signs of her political potential. He remembers her as a teenager in the early 1970s, leading a successful campaign to have tennis courts built in working-class Shantalla.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a huge achievement in a very working-class neighbourhood at the time. She always had the interests of the people and the community at heart,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Her time on Galway City Council was one of great change for the city. There were proposals to build an incinerator on the docks and the first incarnation of the Galway ring road, both of which she opposed, and plans for houses upon houses as the Celtic Tiger approached its eventual overload.<\/p>\n

Connolly had to fight a losing battle in her first term at the local authority when she and her Labour colleague, Tom Costello, were continuously outvoted on motions. In 2004, however, she led a resurgent Labour into a power-sharing agreement with Fine Gael and Independents, becoming the first Labour mayor since Michael D Higgins almost 15 years earlier.<\/p>\n

One of her greatest rivals during that period was Fine Gael\u2019s P\u00e1draig Conneely. Politicians with very different world views, the pair regularly clashed inside and outside council chambers. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe was difficult. She was anti-everything. I never saw her doing anything positive. She would oppose everything. She was difficult to deal with, a difficult lady,\u201d said Conneely. \u201cShe was not very co-operative. She took a stand on a lot of stuff. I think a lot of councillors were a bit afraid of her. She would shout them down.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I adopted a different attitude; I took her on on everything. So myself and herself wouldn\u2019t be that friendly. I challenged her on a lot of stuff, and she didn\u2019t like to be challenged.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to \u00d3 Brolch\u00e1in, Connolly was part of a new wave of Galway politicians at this time, a left-leaning group who had to fight for their place at the table.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way it was in Galway at the time, the officials were very focused on the conservative side of things. So Catherine was persona non grata for a while,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a bit of a siege mentality for anyone who wasn\u2019t a conservative. So she did struggle. She fought very hard, she was a good fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Connolly left the Labour Party in 2007, she left many of her closest grassroots supporters behind her. <\/p>\n

Her sister Colette went on to contest the 2009 and 2014 local elections in the red of Labour, before becoming an Independent herself. <\/p>\n

When Connolly secured the endorsement of Labour to contest the presidency earlier this year, it represented something of a healing moment for the party in Galway. <\/p>\n

Indeed, this campaign marks that first time that Connolly\u2019s long-time friend and neighbour McDonagh, a Labour stalwart, will be able to canvass for her since the local elections in 2004. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am very happy to canvass and support her. Her track record over the years speaks for itself. She has never been afraid to speak out on the issues of the day,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe is a person of principle. When she speaks you know that it is honest and from the heart. I think that she would make a fantastic president.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Often in politics, your closest ally can also be your greatest rival. So it was for Michael D…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[9,10,1921,18,13,14,1878,58848,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,1874,5,59,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-90259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-catherine-connolly","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-featured-news","13":"tag-featurednews","14":"tag-galway","15":"tag-galway-city-council","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-michael-d-higgins","24":"tag-news","25":"tag-presidential-election","26":"tag-top-stories","27":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}