Opinion: The presidential nomination process is entirely democratic

As the dust settles on Catherine Connolly’s landslide victory in one of the more underwhelming presidential elections in recent memory, there has been much discussion surrounding the nomination process with assertions that the rules are undemocratic and in need of reform.

Unsuccessful candidates like Gareth Sheridan spoke out about the small number of candidates on the ballot saying the perceived lack of representation “undermines our democracy and the authority of the presidency itself”.

While the quality of choices for the electorate may have been a disappointment for many, the race would have worsened had any of the more prominent failed candidates been able to enter, a scenario which the safeguards put in place by the Oireachtas and local authority nomination requirements prevented, just as they were designed to do.

For the first time since 1990, no candidate made it on to the ballot via the council nominations route and amidst a diktat issued by Fine Gael to its councillors not to endorse independents, I was among those in feeling that potential candidates might be at an unfair disadvantage when pursuing the office.

However, any lingering misgivings I had were thoroughly dispelled after covering Kilkenny County Council’s special meeting to hear pitches from 12 hopefuls for the Áras.

The assembled councillors and I sat through hour after hour of presentations from candidates who had no grasp on the actual powers or responsibilities of the presidency, used the speaking time to promote personal businesses and grievances or simply seemed to be taking the opportunity to chance their arm and see how far they could make it in the process.

The most impressive speaker by far that day was Nick Delehanty and though his level of knowledge and poise was a cut above his peers, his campaign was over before it started after his disastrous appearance on The Tonight Show earlier in the race where an argument with Kieran Cuddihy over Danish flag laws left him red faced on a national platform.

The fact that a candidate who has run on slogans such as ‘Make Crime Illegal’ was the best that the Kilkenny meeting had to offer is much more an indictment of the pitches given than praise for Mr Delehanty's presidential credentials.

Of the 24 county councillors in Kilkenny, only seven are members of Fine Gael, meaning that a qualified person could have easily gained a Council nomination without the backing of the Government party.

The role of a local authority is to act in a representative capacity for its constituents and I fully believe that the councillors of Kilkenny made the correct decision in not giving its endorsement to any of the hopefuls who sought it.

The nomination bestowed by a council on behalf of the people it represents should be reserved for someone who would make a truly strong bid for the presidency, and not simply given to the least bad candidate on the day, purely for the sake of using it.

While none of the people at the Kilkenny meeting had any chance of making the ballot at that late stage of the process, there were some who came much closer to succeeding, but their presence still would not have elevated the final race.

CEO of Nutriband, Gareth Sheridan, gained two of the four local local authority nominations, falling short in the final day of campaigning.

While he ran the best race of anyone trying to go down the council route and is clearly a very capable businessman, his campaign lacked much substance bar being an advocate for housing, something which the president has little control over and the fact that he would have been the youngest ever candidate for the Áras, hardly overly compelling credentials for the office of head of state.

The lack of council and Oireachtas nominations is a departure from the norm of recent elections, but this correlates with the lesser profile of this year’s batch of hopefuls. There were four candidates put through to the ballot by this path in 2018, but because neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fáil ran anyone against the incumbent President Higgins, let’s look at 2011 instead.

In that year, four people were also given endorsements by local authorities. Mary Davis, CEO of the 2003 Ireland Special Olympics, Sean Gallagher, widely known from his time on Dragon’s Den, David Norris, a senator with decades of experience and Dana, former MEP and Eurovision champion.

None of this year’s participants came remotely close to that cohort in terms of political acumen or national recognition.

The candidate nearest to the ballot was Maria Steen, the conservative activist who came up just short with 18 of the 20 endorsements needed from Oireachtas members.

Ms Steen was also a vocal critic of the process and said that “rarely has the political consensus seemed more oppressive or detached from the wishes and desires of the public”.

As someone who campaigned against abortion and marriage equality, her wishes and desires are much more oppressive and detached from those of the general public than the political consensus, as strained as it may be.

Ms Steen showed little interest in representing the views of anyone other than her own base and the supposed major appetite for a conservative candidate for the presidency has yet to ever be reflected in local and national elections or referenda.

The abortion and marriage equality acts were passed emphatically and I don’t feel as though giving someone who would undo decades of work by women’s and gay rights activists a national platform is keeping with the will of the people in modern Ireland.

That is not to say the system is without flaw by any means. A fair point of criticism from participants was that multiple nomination meetings took place on the same day and at the same time, leading to hopefuls having to pick and choose which councils to canvass.

Anyone who puts their name forward should have the opportunity to speak to every council in search of endorsements, but at the same time, more of an effort needs to be made to reach out to the individual councillors themselves, something which was not widely done for the elected officials in Kilkenny.

Though the two horse race in this year’s election failed to capture the imagination of voters, the nomination process is far from undemocratic. Councils and TDs are chosen by the people and are a representation of political will whether we agree with it or not.

The question of reform in how the president of Ireland is nominated isn’t going to go away, but if the process started from the beginning tomorrow, there isn’t all that much I would change.