Professor Tony Holohan is preparing to launch a bid to become the next President of Ireland, the Irish Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal.
Sources close to the former chief medical officer told the MoS that ‘plans are in progress’ for him to announce his candidacy.
Contacted this weekend, Dr Holohan was coy about a potential run for Áras an Uachtaráin. ‘I can neither confirm nor deny if your
information is correct or incorrect,’ he said in response to reports of his preparing a bid.
Pressed further, Dr Holohan said: ‘I won’t be saying anything at the minute,’ adding that he was currently attending meetings in the UN buildings in Brussels. Dr Holohan became chief medical officer in 2008 and came to prominence during the pandemic. He stepped down in 2022.
A lifelong civil servant, he appears to be acquainting himself with the inner workings of political life, with sources saying he is in ‘diplomatic training’. ‘If you look at his Instagram he has been posting some images outside the UN with the Irish flag, very strategically, fluttering in the background,’ said one source. ‘He is laying the groundwork at the minute,’ they continued.
‘He is familiarising himself with international diplomatic relations in places like the UN parliament, and he is also upping his social media game considerably.’ Asked about his presence at the UN and the strategically posed social-media image, Dr Holohan
laughed, saying, ‘I’m just over here for meetings.’
Since stepping down as CMO, he has taken up several other posts, most recently in April last year when he was awarded an adjunct professorship at Trinity College. He also became an adjunct professor at UCD in 2022, and in February last year, he became director of UCD’s Centre for One Health, aimed at advancing research into global health challenges.
The news comes two years after he was embroiled in a scandal over a plan to appoint him to Trinity on secondment, at the expense
of the taxpayer.
In June of this year, Dr Holohan married Ciara Cronin, a mindfulness-based psychotherapist. They began a relationship in 2023, two-and-a-half years after the death of his first wife, Dr Emer Feely.
The couple had been married for more than 20 years, until Emer died of multiple myeloma in 2021.
It is not clear who will back him in his bid for the Presidency, but he has a cordial relationship with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Fianna Fail has not clarified if it will run a candidate and is to make a decision in the early autumn. As of yet, there are only two declared candidates for the election later this year.
This week MEP and EU commissioner Mairead McGuinness was announced as Fine Gael’s official nominee, after former GAA president Seán Kelly dropped out.
She is expected to be ratified by the party in September. This week she said: ‘I’m conscious of the opportunity and challenge ahead, given the very important constitutional role of the President, and the esteem in which the office is held by the people. Subject to my candidacy being ratified by the party in early September, I very much look forward to setting out my vision.’
Independent TD Catherine Connolly also announced her bid for the Presidency this week, with the backing of the Social Democrats and People Before Profit. The Labour Party is also expected to come on board with its support. Ms Connolly said she does not regret backing conspiracy theorist Gemma O’Doherty’s Presidential bid in 2018, saying her ‘judgment call was right at the time’.
Ms Doherty’s campaign was beset by controversy when she suggested the State had colluded in Veronica Guerin’s murder.
Asked if she regretted the nomination, Ms Connolly said: ‘My judgment call was right at the time. Do I regret what’s happened in relation to her? Absolutely.’
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin has still to decide if it will put forward its own nominee or support an umbrella left-wing candidate. McDonald refused last week to rule herself out of the contest, and speculation about her possible candidacy has grown.
