The Irish presidency holds almost no formal authority, yet it has carried extraordinary weight. When under threat in the 1970s, its strength was restraint. Today, its danger is theatre.
When de Valera drafted the Irish Constitution of 1937 he created a head of state with almost no powers. The model was close to Britain’s monarchy, a figure to embody the state but not to govern it. De Valera distrusted the cult of personality. He wanted an office that could confer dignity without usurping power. He wanted a guardian that would never threaten the primacy of the Irish parliament, the Dáil.
Douglas Hyde, the first president, reflected that vision. He was a scholar rather than a politician, a cultural figure chosen for his symbolic weight. He kept the Áras above politics and in so doing embodied what de Valera had designed: a head of state whose authority lay in reserve, not in action.
Yet the very emptiness of the role also made it fragile. That fragility was exposed in 1976 when Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh resigned after a minister’s insult left the presidency humiliated. His departure revealed how vulnerable the office could be if placed in the political arena. Patrick Hillery’s answer was restraint. His presidency was almost invisible, but that was deliberate. He withdrew the office from danger by keeping it quiet. Restraint was his protection.
Mary Robinson shattered that model. She turned the Áras into a moral presence. The candle burning in the window for Irish emigrants was more than symbolism. It was a claim that the president could speak to the nation’s conscience. Robinson’s visibility was safe because of her extraordinary legal mind. She understood the Constitution intimately. She never transgressed its boundaries. Her presence gave the presidency new life without endangering its authority.
Mary McAleese followed with the same balance. She was a jurist of remarkable skill. She could speak to reconciliation in the North and to Ireland’s place in the world. Yet she always spoke with a discipline that protected the institution. Her visibility, like Robinson’s, was grounded in substance.
Michael D. Higgins extended the pattern. At first glance he was the poet president, a philosopher in a prosaic age. But behind the poetry was a lifetime in academia, human rights, governance and political practice. His presidency was anchored in depth.
For half a century Ireland has been fortunate. The transformation of the presidency into a visible office coincided with figures of rare calibre. Visibility was safe because it was tethered to substance.
But what happens if the demand for presence remains without the depth to sustain it? What happens if the public expects performance but the occupant of the Áras lacks the intellectual and moral weight to bear it? Then visibility becomes risk. The symbols that Robinson, McAleese and Higgins used with care—the candle in the window, the hand extended across the border, the words of conscience—risk becoming empty gestures. They are reduced to theatre.
Our politics is already saturated with theatre. Even humility is staged, rehearsed, packaged as a campaign brand. Candidates speak of service but choreograph every gesture for attention. The very office designed to protect us from spectacle is in danger of being consumed by it.
If we want to see where spectacle without restraint leads we need only look across the water. The British monarchy, designed after the Civil War to be a symbol of aloof dignity, has become a soap opera. Its scandals are consumed as entertainment. Its rituals are drained of seriousness. The crown survives, but the dignity it was meant to protect has collapsed under the weight of exposure. De Valera designed the presidency to avoid precisely that fate. He foresaw the dangers of family spectacle and inherited celebrity. What he wanted for Ireland was a guardian of the Constitution.
The Constitution is not self-protecting. It depends on the calibre of those who inhabit its offices. Robinson, McAleese and Higgins carried visibility with depth. Nothing guarantees that pattern will continue. If performance without substance is what the age rewards, then the presidency will be reduced to theatre. And theatre cannot protect anything.
Here a deeper truth reveals itself. When facing its greatest danger, the strength of the presidency was not display but restraint. The Stoics held that true power is self-mastery, the courage to hold back when applause can be won by stepping forward. A presidency that seeks the crowd might well die by the crowd. A presidency that remembers restraint can outlast it. President Hillery understood this.
What once looked like the suffocation of smallness in De Valera’s Ireland may, in hindsight, reveal a few lost strengths: the belief that value can exist without display; dignity can be quiet; guardianship is not noise but vigilance.
Only fools think silence is emptiness. It is not. Sometimes it is a space in which trust can grow and live. In an age that confuses attention with worth, the refusal to perform is itself an act of courage. If the presidency becomes theatre, it will cease to guard. But if it holds to restraint, it may yet remind us of something we are in danger of forgetting. That dignity is not a costume to be worn for effect. It is a discipline of the soul.
The question is whether we still have the soulfulness to recognise it.
Consilium 
Leave a comment