On the campaign trail, Catherine Connolly insisted Ireland needed a president who is “not afraid to stand against the consensus”.
It is something the Galway native learned to do from a very young age.
“Coming from a family of 14 children, I grew up with an understanding of the importance of listening to different voices,” she said.
Her parents’ marriage produced seven girls and seven boys who were raised in a social housing estate in Galway city.
The future president was their ninth child and has reminisced about how growing up in such a large family shaped her views and “formed me in every way”.
“I come from a background that put a very high value on integrity and honesty,” she told the BBC’s Talkback programme last month.
“My mother died when I was young and I watched my father – the most honest man – work every single week on our behalf to bring us up.”
Her mother’s death was sudden. The young Catherine was only nine years old at the time and the youngest child was a one-year-old baby.
Her widowed father, a plasterer who also took on small building jobs, was left needing help at home.
In interviews, Connolly pays tribute to her two older sisters who “stepped into the breach” and spent most of their teenage years looking after their younger siblings.
