Do we like them?

Do we like Catherine Connolly?

Our score: 8 out of 10. Decent and on the right side of LGBTQ+ rights and the planet, held back by one contested Hamas remark and a staffing row.

Connolly grew up in Shantalla, a big Galway council estate, one of 14 kids. Her mum died when she was nine and her dad, a carpenter turned builder, raised the family with help from the eldest sisters. She went on to study psychology, worked as a clinical psychologist, then became a barrister in 1991, mostly in family law.

Politically she's a bit of a maverick. She won a Galway council seat for Labour in 1999, left the party around 2007 after reportedly being blocked from a ticket, and lost a Dáil seat by 17 votes in 2011. She finally won it in 2016, became the first woman elected deputy speaker, and in October 2025 won the presidency in a landslide, with 63 per cent of first preferences.

On the harm test, she's solid on the LGBTQ+ stuff. She backed legislation to wipe past convictions for consensual sex between men, calling the old laws “homophobia at its worst” in the Dáil. She has said that “Inciting fear and hatred towards the LGBTQIA community is abhorrent.” The one soft spot for some readers was a radio answer on gender that critics found hesitant, and that comes from a right-leaning outlet we couldn't open, so we haven't leaned on it.

The contested bit is Israel and Gaza. On RTÉ's Morning Ireland in September 2025 she described Hamas as “part of the fabric of the Palestinian people”, and said she had “utterly condemned” the 7 October attacks. She also said both sides had committed war crimes. Where you land depends on whether you hear that as a blunt description of Palestinian society or as going soft on Hamas. We read it as a position some will dislike, not hate.

The staffing row is the other mark. During the campaign Justice Minister Jim O'Callaghan alleged she broke Oireachtas rules by giving a former staffer Leinster House access without Garda vetting, and the then Ceann Comhairle's account contradicted hers. She said the paperwork was filed from day one and the person left because vetting dragged. No formal finding was reported, so it sits as a dispute over process.

On the planet, her message is consistent. In May 2026 she told a Dublin City University climate conference that “we rarely hear about the emissions caused by warfare”, and called for the silence to be called out. Opponents had questioned her talk of the military-industrial complex during the campaign, with some reading it as a dig at arms for Ukraine. She also voted No in all four EU treaty referendums (Nice and Lisbon), citing the build-up of Europe's military and neoliberal ideology.