Patrick Comerford
President Michael D Higgins formally relinquishes office as President of Ireland at midnight tonight (Monday 10 November 2025), and Catherine Connolly becomes president at an inauguration ceremony in Dublin Castle tomorrow (Tuesday 11 November 2025).
In her inauguration speech, she is expected to indicate some of the themes and priorities of her presidency and the projects she hopes to undertake. After her election victory, she spoke in Dublin Castle of a new-style Republic, so tomorrow she may touch on that and on her plans to revisit communities across the country she visited during her campaign.
As President Michael D Higgins prepares to step down tonight, I find it appropriate to look back on my memories of his commitment to peace and social justice, and some of the many achievements of this president, poet, politician, academic and campaigner.
I first got to know Michael Higgins over 50 years ago. We were both delegates at the Labour Party conference in Cork in 1973, when he slept on the floor in the rooms I was sharing with Philip orish, another Wexford constituency delegate in Moore’s Hotel.
Both as a senator (1973-1977, 1983-1987) and as a TD (1981-1982, 1987-2011), he was an active supporter of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), took part in the protests against President Ronald Reagan’s visit to Ireland in 1984 and later against the war in Iraq, and was also deeply committed to campaign groups focussed on Latin American issues, particularly in El Salvador and Nicaragua.
In those years, we took part together in many protests outside the US Embassy in Dublin. I was among his guests in the Mansion House in Dublin in 1992 when he was presented with the Sean MacBride Peace Prize by the International Peace Prize – Sean MacBride had been president of both Irish CND and the IPB.
The measure of the man’s international acclaim as a poet, a key figure in shaping cultural policies across Europe and his reputation internationally was edident when I was writing regularly for The Irish Times on Greek politics and culture in the 1990s. Once when I was interviewing the Greek Minister of Culture, Professor Evangelos Venizelos, in Athens, the first person he asked about was Michael D Higgins, and he asked me to convey much he appreciated both his poetry and his standing among politicians in Pasok and other European socialist parties.
I was invited, unexpectedly, in 2008 to chair a seminar organised by Pax Christi, the International Catholic Peace Movement, on the topic: ‘Towards a Comprehensive Ban on Cluster Bombs.’ The seminar also saw the launch of Pax Christi’s campaign, ‘Make Cluster Bombs History.’
The speakers included Michael D Higgins, then President of the Labour Party and Labour spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, the President of Pax Christi Ireland, Bishop Raymond Field, and Joe Little of RTÉ, who spoke on the effects of cluster munitions in Lebanon.
When Mr Higgins was elected President in 2011, peace and anti-war groups, including PANA, the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), Shannonwatch and Galway Alliance Against War (GAAW), expressed the hope that his time as President would further the cause of peace and bring a renewed focus on the importance of Irish neutrality, causes he has passionately defended throughout his political career.
He consistently opposed the use of Shannon, a civilian airport, for the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. He was critical of the apparent Irish collusion with the US government in relation to suspected rendition flights through Shannon, and he once called on the government to withdraw Irish military personnel from Afghanistan. Hundreds of armed US troops passed through Shannon Airport each day without any oversight or inspection of planes suspected of carrying illegally kidnapped prisoners, CIA assassination crews or dangerous munitions.
President McAleese opened the doors of Áras an Uachtaráin to people working for peace, development and human rightsWhen his presidential election campaign began in June 2011, Michael D Higgins was one of the speakers at the launch of the Wexford Ambassadors programme in Iveagh House, Dublin. The programme was launched by the Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin, Labour TD for Wexford, and the chair of Wexford County Council, Councillor Michael Kavangh. The first four appointed Wexford Ambassadors that evening were the writers Colm Tóibín and Eoin Colfer, the rugby international Gordon D’Arcy and the soccer international Kevin Doyle. His predecessor as President, President Mary McAleese, opened the doors of Áras an Uachtaráin to those she encouraged in work for peace, development, human rights and interfaith dialogue.
She warmly welcomed me to Áras an Uachtaráin on Sean MacBride’s 100th birthday; when she publicly thanked and affirmed Development and Mission workers and agencies for work in Africa; and when an interfaith group of Christians and Muslims from Egypt were visiting Ireland in 2006.
President Higgins was in office during the difficult ‘decade of centenaries’, including those of the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant, the 1913 Lock-Out, World War I and its many battles, the 1916 Rising, the First Dail and the Irish War of Independence, and he lived up to his pledge that in office he would continue President McAleese’s work to help heal the wounds of the Troubles in Ireland.
His first official engagement as President of Ireland was attending the Remembrance Sunday service in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, and he was there again as President for the last time yesterday. His second inauguration ceremony in 2018 was held in the evening so that he could attend the Armistice Day commemorations in the morning – two opportunities that President-elect Connolly should not miss when she is in office and seeks to demonstrate that she is the President for all the people.
A year after his inauguration, and 20 years after he received the Sean MacBride Peace Prize, President Higgins was invited by the International Peace Bureau to present the 2012 Sean MacBride Peace Prize to two Arab activists, Dr Lina Ben Mhenni from Tunisia and Dr Nawal El-Sadaawi from Egypt, for their courage and contributions to the ‘Arab Spring.’ I was present as President of Irish CND at the ceremony and his address in All Hallows’ College, Drumcondra, that evening.
The ceremony marked the opening of the annual conference of the International Peace Bureau, and it was the first time the IPB council ever met in Ireland in over 100 years of its history. Old friends and fellow campaigners who were there that night included Caitriona Lawlor, who worked for many years with Sean MacBride, Brendan Butler, a long-time activist on Central American rights, David Hutchinson-Edgar of Irish CND, Roger Cole of the Peace and Neutrality Alliance, Joe Murray of Afri, Tony D’Souza of Pax Christi, and Rob Farmichael, the nonviolence activist.
The evening ended in conversation with President Higgins and the veteran international peace activist, the late Bruce Kent, who had been a personal friend since the mid-1970s.
President Higgins and I both spoke at the annual National Famine Commemoration in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin, in 2016, when he accused European nations failing to respond to their humanitarian obligations to refugees and said they should learn the lessons of the Great Famine in Ireland. He compared some of the rhetoric used today about people crossing the Mediterranean ‘marine grave’ to media reports during the worst period of Ireland’s 19th century catastrophe. Between 1845 and 1849, over a million people died of hunger and related diseases, and two million fled a country ‘with no hope.’ Many who emigrated faced fresh marginalisation on arrival on foreign shores.
President Higgins asked: ‘Is there not a lesson for all of us, as we are faced in our own time with the largest number of displaced people since World War II, as the Mediterranean becomes, for many, a marine grave, as European nations fail to respond to their humanitarian obligations?’
I was at that commemorative service on behalf of the Church of Ireland and said in my prayers: ‘As we remember those who were driven from this land in their hunger, in their thirst, and in their quest for justice and mercy, and how they left on the high seas, let us pray for those who are driven from their own lands as they hungered and thirsted for justice and mercy.’
I added: ‘Let us pray in particular for the people of Syria, for those who are on the high seas in the Aegean and the Mediterranean, and those who flee places where climate change and our inaction deprives them of justice and forces them to choose between, on the one hand, hunger and thirst at home, and short measures of justice and mercy in the countries they reach.’
Another speaker that Sunday was the then Minister for the Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Ms Heather Humphreys, the other candidate in last month’s Presidential election.
Ireland has been well served by Michael D Higgins as President of Ireland, and he has used the office to keep reminding everyone of important values both at home and internationally.
President Michael D Higgins at the presentation of the Sean MacBride Peace Prize in All Hallows’ College, Drumcondra, in 2012
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