Conservative campaigner Maria Steen has confirmed she is interested in running for president and will be having “conversations” with politicians over the next two weeks.
Ms Steen was part of the successful campaign against the failed family and care referendums in 2024. She is a member of the Iona Institute, the Catholic advocacy group, and campaigned against the lifting of the State’s constitutional bans on abortion in 2018 and marriage equality in 2015.
She has also been critical of divorce and assisted dying. Ms Steen is a qualified barrister but works within the home as a stay at home mother.
“I am interested in running in the forthcoming presidential election and am looking to have conversations with politicians, but it is not an easy route for a non-party candidate,” Ms Steen told The Irish Times.
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“I would like to offer myself as an alternative to establishment candidates, and I’m trying to gauge what kind of support there is out there both amongst politicians and the electorate. The next week or two will tell.”
To become a nominee on the ballot paper, Ms Steen needs the support of either 20 members of the Oireachtas or four local councils.
Ms Steen said that while “both routes are difficult,” she was open to either.
Independent Senator Sharon Keogan had named her as one of five independent candidates Ms Keogan would like to help get on to the ballot paper.
Ms Keogan has been introducing candidates such as 36-year-old businessman Gareth Sheridan to independent councillors.
After Ms Keogan had mentioned Ms Steen as a possible candidate on August 20th, Ms Steen had issued a statement which said that she had “not made any decision to seek a nomination and have no campaign in place”.
Speaking at a talk hosted by the Iona Institute in May, Ms Steen said that death had emerged as a “unifying centre of an awful pentagram ... the death of marriage as traditionally understood. The death of procreative sex. The death of the child in the womb. The death of biological sex as a defining characteristic of humanity. And finally, death itself, chosen for itself.”
She said that the teachings of Pope John Paul II say that “conscience, prayer, service, and above all the protection and recognition of the family based on marriage, offer the best chances of creating a culture in which human life can flourish.
“The experience of the past thirty years has demonstrated, I think, just how clear-eyed Pope Saint John Paul was in recognising the dangers that threatened society when Evangelium Vitae was first published.
“And I think it remains as relevant today as then. The conflict between the cultures of life and death never ends in this world.”
