There was a very early family tragedy in their life
Catherine Connolly arrives at Dublin Castle after being declared the winner in the Presidential election to become the next President of Ireland(Image: Photo by Mostafa Darwish/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Catherine Connolly will be inaugurated as the 10th President of Ireland tomorrow.
The Galway native was elected President last month following her landslide victory.
Catherine Connolly has been a mainstay of politics in Galway for nearly three decades, serving as a councillor and, more recently, a TD in Dail Eireann.
Connolly has been an independent politician since 2006, having previously represented the Irish Labour Party as a Galway city councillor.
Before her election into Dáil Éireann in 2016, Connolly had amassed 17 years of experience as a City Councillor, initially securing a seat on Galway City Council for the West electoral area in June 1999. She successfully secured re-election in the South local electoral area in 2004, the same year she was elected Mayor of Galway, a role she held from 2004 to 2005.
She played a crucial role as Leas-Cheann Comhairle of the 33rd Dáil from July 2020 to November 2024 and chaired the Committee on the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Islands from 2016 till 2020.
Born into a large family, Connolly is one of fourteen siblings. They were brought up by their father, a carpenter and shipbuilder, and their mother, who tragically passed away when Catherine was only nine years old.
She pursued higher education and earned her master’s degree in clinical psychology from the University of Leeds in 1981. She also obtained a law degree from the University of Galway in 1989.
Catherine has been happily married to Brian McEnery for 33 years, having tied the knot in 1992. The couple have always kept their relationship out of the public eye, although Brian has occasionally accompanied his wife at various events.
Most recently, they were seen at the annual blessing of the boats at Galway’s Claddagh Basin. Catherine and Brian are proud parents to two adult sons.
Politics runs in the family for Catherine, with her sister Collette serving as a Galway city councillor for 18 years before retiring in 2024.
Connolly, known for her socialist beliefs during her time with Labour, was often associated with the party’s left-wing Irish republican faction. She has been outspoken on issues such as Gaza.
The TD observed, “I see the narrative that continues from the government despite the good steps that have been taken,” regarding the situation. Connolly voiced her frustration, declaring, “There’s a narrative that utterly fails to condemn Israel for the genocidal state that it is. We talk as if history started on October 7th. It certainly did not.”
She added, “We condemn without hesitation what happened, but no context given, no history given at all.”
Before the 2018 abortion referendum, Connolly made her position known to the Irish Times, declaring that the Eighth Amendment “simply has to go” and it’s “time to trust women to make decisions”.
Regarding Irish neutrality, she voiced concerns about it being undermined “by the warmongering military industrial complex” across Europe.”
Connolly has repeatedly argued that government policy lies at the heart of the housing and homelessness emergencies.
During a recent Dáil address, Connolly remarked: “Each policy from each government has intensified the crisis because you have failed to recognise, deliberately so, that housing is a basic human right, and you’ve dealt with it like an asset and allowed the market to provide.”
“And when the market didn’t provide, you brought in every possible scheme to support the market.”
Connoly’s personal life has also bee marked by tragedy. She was just nine years old when her mother died suddenly.
It had a profound impact on her and all of her siblings’ lives, and Ms Connolly found it difficult to thrive in school while her sister stayed at home to keep the household running. “Everybody copes differently, and I sort of coped by saying I didn’t have someone to control me,” she said.
“My mother wasn’t there to tell me to put on the coat or the scarf that my friends had to wear. So I had a sense of freedom. Now, it was an illusion. It was an illusion of freedom. It was just my way of coping. It was much later that I realised the magnitude of the loss.
“It was the suddenness of it overnight, and it was such that it did affect all of us. Maybe I closed down a little bit, cut it off. You know, as a coping mechanism.” On her days in school, Ms Connolly said she loved playing with her friends, but was “afraid” and that “fear” was on her mind.
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