Mary Patricia McAleese (; ; born 27 June 1951) is an Irish activist lawyer, academic, author, and former politician who served as the president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. Born in Ardoyne, north Belfast, she is the first president of Ireland to have come from Ulster.
McAleese graduated in law from Queen's University Belfast. In 1975, she was appointed Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin, and in 1987 she returned to her alma mater, Queen's, to become director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. In 1994, she became the first female pro-vice-chancellor of Queen's University. She worked as a barrister and as a journalist with RTÉ. She is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. She has also earned a doctorate in Catholic canon law.
McAleese used her time in office to address issues concerning justice, social equality, social inclusion, anti-sectarianism and reconciliation. She described her presidency's theme as "Building Bridges". This bridge-building materialised in her attempts to reach out to the unionist community in Northern Ireland. These steps included celebrating the Twelfth of July at Áras an Uachtaráin and taking Communion in a Church of Ireland cathedral in Dublin, for which she incurred some criticism from some of the Irish Catholic hierarchy. Though a Catholic, McAleese holds liberal views on homosexuality and women priests. She is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders and was ranked the 64th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. In spite of some minor controversies, McAleese remained popular, and her presidency is regarded as successful.
Background and family life Born Mary Patricia Leneghan (), in Ardoyne, north Belfast to Paddy Leneghan from Croghan, County Roscommon and Claire McManus from County Antrim. She is a Catholic but grew up in a largely Protestant neighbourhood. Loyalists forced her family to leave the area when the Troubles broke out. She was educated at St Dominic's High School, an all-girls Catholic grammar school in Belfast. She studied law at Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1973 with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB Hons) degree. She was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1974, and was later called to the Irish Bar.
In 1976, she married Martin McAleese, an accountant and dentist. He assisted his wife with some of her initiatives as president. They have three children. Ahead of the 2015 marriage equality referendum, her son spoke publicly about growing up gay.
Every year she spends some time with the Poor Clares.
Early career In 1975, having spent a year as a practising barrister in Belfast, she was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology in Trinity College Dublin, succeeding Mary Robinson. Also in 1975, McAleese chaired a meeting at Liberty Hall that advocated a woman's right to choose and was quoted as saying that "I would see the failure to provide abortion as a human rights issue". She later claimed that she was given to understand that the nature of the meeting was to be a discussion among all sides and opinions.Ruth Riddick, The Right to Choose: Questions of Feminist Morality (Dublin 1990) pages 4–9
During the same decade, she was a legal advisor to and a founding member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. She left this position in 1979, to join RTÉ as a journalist and presenter, during one period as a reporter and presenter for their Frontline replaced by Today Tonight in 1980 programme. However, in RTÉ, she and Alex White (then a TV producer and later a Labour Party TD) were attacked and criticised by a group led by Eoghan Harris, associated with the Workers' Party, over what they perceived as her bias towards republican groups in the North. McAleese was critical of the Provisional IRA, but believed it was important to hear their side of the story; she opposed the Harris faction's support for Section 31 (preventing RTÉ interviews with spokespersons for Sinn Féin and the IRA), which she believed was an attack on free speech. In 1981, she returned to the Reid Professorship, but continued to work part-time for RTÉ for a further four years. In 1987, she returned to Queen's University, to become Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. She stood, unsuccessfully, as a Fianna Fáil candidate in Dublin South-East at the 1987 general election, receiving 2,243 votes (5.9%).
In 1987, McAleese was a prominent opponent of the proposal to ratify the Single European Act during the referendum campaign for the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
McAleese has a long-standing involvement in ecumenism and anti-sectarianism. She co-chaired the working party on sectarianism set up by the Irish Inter-Church Meeting in 1991 and its report (1993) was described by Professor Marianne Elliot as "the most notable" work of the Inter-Church Meetings. McAleese was the author and presenter of a successful BBC Radio Ulster series called "The Protestant Mind" which encouraged the divided communities in Northern Ireland to try to stand in each other's shoes. McAleese was a member of the Catholic Church Episcopal Delegation to the New Ireland Forum in 1984, and a member of the Catholic Church delegation to the Northern Ireland Commission on Contentious Parades in 1996. She was also a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland and to the subsequent Pittsburgh Conference in 1996. She became the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast. Prior to becoming president in 1997, McAleese had also held the following positions: Channel 4 Television, Director, Northern Ireland Electricity, Director, Royal Group of Hospitals Trust and Founding member of the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas.
McAleese is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women Presidents and Prime Ministers, whose mission is to mobilise the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.
Presidency (1997–2011) First term (1997–2004)
In 1997, McAleese defeated former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and former minister Michael O'Kennedy in an internal party election held to determine the Fianna Fáil nomination for the Irish presidency.
Her opponents in the 1997 presidential election were Mary Banotti, nominated by Fine Gael, Adi Roche nominated by the Labour Party, Democratic Left and the Green Party, and two candidates standing as Independents nominated by local authorities: Dana Rosemary Scallon and Derek Nally. McAleese won 45.2% of first preference votes. In the second and final count, McAleese was elected having obtained 55.6% of votes against Banotti. On 11 November 1997, she was inaugurated as the eighth President of Ireland. Within weeks of this, she made her first official overseas trip to Lebanon."President revisits Lebanon on her final foreign trip in office" , The Irish Times, 15 October 2011.
McAleese described the theme of her presidency as "building bridges". The first individual born in Northern Ireland to become President of Ireland, President McAleese was a regular visitor to Northern Ireland throughout her presidency, where she was on the whole warmly welcomed by both communities, confounding critics who had believed she would be a divisive figure. People from Northern Ireland, indeed people from right across the nine-county Province of Ulster, were regular and recurring visitors to Áras an Uachtaráin while she was president. She is also an admirer of Queen Elizabeth II, whom she came to know when she was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University of Belfast. In March 1998, President McAleese stated that she would officially celebrate the Twelfth of July as well as Saint Patrick's Day, recognising the day's importance among Ulster Protestants.
She also incurred some criticism from some of the Irish Catholic hierarchy by taking communion in a Church of Ireland (Anglican) Cathedral, in Dublin, on 7 December 1997, although 78 per cent of Irish people approved of her action in a following opinion poll. While Cardinal Desmond Connell called her action a "sham" and a "deception", Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said it was ironic that "the Church was condemning an act of reconciliation and bridge-building between the denominations".
In 1998, she met Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston on an official visit to the United States. In an interview in 2012, she said that Law told her he was "sorry for Catholic Ireland to have you as President" and went on to insult a Minister of State, who was accompanying McAleese. "His remarks were utterly inappropriate and unwelcome," she said. McAleese told the cardinal that she was the "President of Ireland and not just of Catholic Ireland". At this point, a heated argument ensued between the two, according to McAleese.
Second term (2004–2011)
McAleese's first seven-year term of office ended in November 2004, but she stood for a second term in the 2004 presidential election. Following the failure of any other candidate to secure the necessary support for nomination, the incumbent president stood unopposed, with no political party affiliation, and was declared elected on 1 October 2004. She was re-inaugurated at the commencement of her second seven-year term on 11 November 2004. McAleese's very high approval ratings were widely seen as the reason for her re-election, with no opposition party willing to bear the cost (financial or political) of competing in an election that would prove difficult to win.
On 27 January 2005, following her attendance at the ceremony commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, she created friction by referring to the way some Protestant children in Northern Ireland had been raised to hate Catholics, just as European children "for generations, for centuries" were encouraged to hate Jews. These remarks provoked outrage among unionist politicians. McAleese later apologised, conceding that her comments had been unbalanced because she had criticised only the sectarianism found on one side of the community.
She was the Commencement Speaker at Villanova University in Villanova, Pennsylvania, on 22 May 2005. The visit prompted protests by conservatives because of the president's professing heterodox Catholic views on homosexuality and women in the priesthood. She was the commencement speaker at the University of Notre Dame on 21 May 2006. In her commencement address, among other topics, she spoke of her pride at Notre Dame's Irish heritage, including the nickname the "Fighting Irish".
She attended the funeral of Pope John Paul II on 8 April 2005, and the Papal Inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI on 24 April 2005.
McAleese attended the canonisation by Pope Benedict XVI in Rome of Charles of Mount Argus on 3 June 2007. She was accompanied by her husband, Martin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, Mary Hanafin, the Minister for Education and Science, together with bishops and other pilgrims. She later met the Pope and embarked on other official duties, including a trip to St. Isidore's College, a talk at the Pontifical Irish College and a Mass said especially for the Irish Embassy at Villa Spada chapel.
In August 2007, she spoke out against homophobia at the International Association of Suicide Prevention's 24th Biennial Conference.