An important decision that has to be taken, after the local and European elections, is who will fill the office of President of Ireland for the next seven years.
This may involve an election, or there may be an agreement on President McAleese serving a second term. In two of the three cases to date, where an incumbent President was willing to serve a second term, Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh in 1952 and Paddy Hillery in 1983, this was agreed without contest.
Only in 1966 was an incumbent President challenged, the close outcome justifying the challenge. Éamon de Valera did not campaign at 84 years of age, and had a controversial past unlike any other holder of the office.
Ireland has been fortunate over the past 14 years in having two outstanding Presidents, Mary Robinson and Mary McAleese. They have both been very active in supporting voluntary and community endeavour and in bridge-building. They also projected abroad the Ireland of the peace process and the Celtic Tiger, as well as an Ireland concerned with problems of conflict, human rights and underdevelopment. Mary Robinson pioneered the new style of presidency. Mary McAleese has, as the Irish Times editorial put it on Thursday, consolidated it. She has been truly a people's President.
While this newspaper has put the case for a contest, there is also wisdom in the precedent of not opposing an incumbent, generally accepted to be doing a good job. I do not believe Fianna Fáil would have opposed Mary Robinson, if she had sought a second term.
The President is independent of and above party politics. It is no service to the presidency to force an incumbent who has been successful in that regard back into a partisan role after seven years.
I am sure, if she goes forward again, there would be no reluctance by President McAleese to campaign, for which she has all the requisite skills.
Glib statements are made about the political alignments of Presidents, which do not stand up to scrutiny. Only three of our eight Presidents were active party politicians at the time of nomination: Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, Éamon de Valera and Erskine Childers. Douglas Hyde was an agreed non-party candidate brought out of retirement, who transcended all traditions. Paddy Hillery had been a politically neutral EEC commissioner for four years, working closely with the national coalition.
Mary Robinson's reputation was built as a courageous and independent-minded academic and human rights lawyer, who was also a senator. She severed her nine-year membership of the Labour Party in 1985. Mary McAleese's membership of Fianna Fáil in 1985-1987 was even briefer.
Mary Robinson was no more a Labour President, than Mary McAleese is a Fianna Fáil President.
Mary Robinson made it very clear during her election campaign and subsequently in office that she was not there for the purpose of furthering the interests of the Labour Party.
Mary McAleese comes from Northern Ireland, where she had a distinguished academic career and one of public service, showing what an able person from a nationalist background could achieve and contribute constructively to Northern society.
Insofar as she had any party affiliation, it was as a branch member of the SDLP. More significantly, she was associated with the peace mediation work of Clonard Monastery.
Mary Robinson went into west Belfast in 1993, against bitter Labour opposition, in a confidence-building gesture important to the peace process. Mary McAleese has used her presidency and her Northern roots and the more relaxed constitutional climate post-1998 to reach out to all sides of the community, especially to those most distrustful of Irish nationalism.
Because of the exceptional impression made in recent years, we have tended to underestimate the contribution of their predecessors. Hyde was an imaginative choice, who defused any fears of the office.
Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh was a bustling and popular figure.
De Valera incarnated an independence movement that was a model for many other countries. Would de Gaulle, the personification of France post-1940, have stayed in Ireland in 1969, while his successor was being elected, if there had not been a kindred spirit in Áras an Uachtaráin?
Erskine Childers, son of a famous patriot, came into his own as a forerunner of the modern presidency, and encouraged a new ecumenical spirit in the South, when the Troubles were at their height in the North.
Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh was unfortunate that the duty of upholding the institutions of the State did not extend to the presidency.
President Hillery represented Ireland as a new member of the EEC extremely well, as I witnessed as a junior diplomat on his state visit to Germany in 1977. Although it might have been good to spare Ireland three general elections in 1981-1982, it would have brought the office into political controversy to have refused a dissolution to the Taoiseach, Garret FitzGerald, when his government lost the vote on the budget in January 1982.
President Robinson's presumed willingness to refuse Albert Reynolds a dissolution in November 1994 was a factor in his resignation without seeking one, and in the subsequent formation of a rainbow coalition without an election.
Enda Kenny in my opinion is right, from a national not just a party point of view, to offer support to President McAleese, if she decides to nominate herself.
The Labour Party has not committed itself yet to putting forward an alternative candidate, though is clearly airing the case for doing so. I wonder at the end of the day will they find that the advantages add up. Obviously, it would suit the Socialist Workers' Party, the anti-war, anti-globalisation, and "smash capitalism" brigade to have a figure round whom they could rally.
I could not see Sinn Féin opposing the re-election of a woman from Ardoyne.
I would even be sceptical that Joe Higgins would be that anxious to establish the countrywide scale of his popularity. It remains to be seen if there will be any election.