Heather Humphreys did not lose the presidential election because she is a Presbyterian, but the sectarian abuse directed towards her by a minority did feature, and it has left a bitter aftertaste.
From the off, there were voices, if a limited number, in Fine Gael who believed they should promote Humphreys’s background as a unique selling point: one who, if elected, could “reach parts in Northern Ireland that nobody else can reach”.
Instead, Fine Gael’s campaign team rejected the advice, believing, in the words of one of those involved, “there wasn’t anyone in the Republic, bar a few people along the Border, who are interested in all that”. They were wrong.
Instead of putting her Border and religious background forward as a strongly-articulated theme of her campaign, Fine Gael ran away from it. This left space for others to define her background.
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Questions came not about her religion, but, rather, about allegations that she was connected to the Orange Order, still too often associated in the minds with the Drumcree marches in the 1990s.
From the beginning of the campaign, Humphreys was on the back foot by questioning on the subject from the Daily Mail, especially about her husband Eric’s alleged connections to the Orange Order.
She was clearly thrown by the questions. She is not a member of the Orange Order, nor could she be. Her husband had attended Orange marches, like many other Border Protestants, before The Troubles, but not afterwards.
She fluffed the answers, sounding awkward, or evasive. Humphreys’s discomfort about such questioning perhaps reflected the deep fissures left on the mentality of Border Protestants by The Troubles.
Growing up in Drum, Co Monaghan, as a young Presbyterian during the height of the Troubles in the 70s, Humphreys was often told by her father Freddie to “keep her head, and to say little”.
It was advice she followed when she later began a successful political career, one based on her involvement in her community, rather than upon her religious background – even if she did garner strong support from Presbyterian and Church of Ireland voters.
[ What went wrong in the Heather Humphreys campaign?Opens in new window ]
However, during her time as minster for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht when she led the Government’s work on the Decade of Centenaries, she did speak of herself as “a Protestant, and an Ulsterwoman who is a proud Irish republican”.
Why she did not do so now, and loudly during the campaign remains somewhat of a mystery. “She had a story to tell. She is not the same as the two Protestants that we had: Douglas Hyde and Erskine Childers. They were ‘horse’ Protestants from a monied background,” said one observer.
“Heather was never fox-hunting in her life. She’s from a radical Presbyterian tradition. She’s from a different tradition and background to what we had before. And she’s married to a quiet Protestant with less than 100 acres,” said one Fine Gael insider.
The focus on her home village in Drum, Co Monaghan, has been uncomfortable for many, especially with the repeated claim that it hosts a parade organised by the Orange Order every July.
In reality, there has not been an Orange parade in Monaghan since the early 1930s. Instead, Drum hosts what is known as “the Drum picnic”, which was attended by Fianna Fáil’s Éamon Ó Cuív during his time in cabinet.
[ Unionists shocked by level of sectarian abuse during election, says HumphreysOpens in new window ]
“She used the word ‘picnic’. I have been living here for over 70 years, and it has always been referred to as that. The charges made against it were really pulling out of the bottom drawer,” said one Drum local.
Faced now with denials that sectarian abuse ever took place, one Fine Gael figure involved in the campaign told The Irish Times: “Look, I was phoned from Waterford where people were told that they ‘weren’t going to have a f***ing Orangewoman in the Áras’.”
The Fine Gael candidate was thunderstruck by the vitriol that emerged: “She was shattered. She could not overcome it. She did not want to talk about it,” the same source went on.
For now, the outcome will likely make Border Protestants just a little more careful, while unionists and loyalists across the Border who want to portray the Republic negatively have already seized on the language used.
One Monaghan local said: “The majority of people in the South don’t agree with this type of thing being said, but it harks back to something at the back of their brain when it is said, and they won’t speak out against it.”
“For some people, I think that Heather Humphreys was fine as a messenger and a Dáil representative for people, but when it came to giving her the highest office in the land then they said: ‘Well, I’m not so sure that we want to give her that status’.”
Humphreys has retreated, probably thankfully, back home, but the campaign will leave a residue: “My fear is that it has put everything back 10 years, or, worse, a lot more,” said one source closely involved for years in cross-Border work.
