The 1997 Irish presidential election was held on Thursday, 30 October 1997. It was the eleventh presidential election to be held in Ireland, and only the sixth to be contested by more than one candidate. It was held ahead of schedule when incumbent President Mary Robinson resigned to assume her new appointment as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Candidates
The Minister for the Environment and Local Government made the order opening nominations on 15 September, with 30 September as the deadline for nominations. Five people received nominations, the highest number contesting to that point; four of the five were women.
Mary McAleese
Mary McAleese was selected by Fianna Fáil as their candidate for the presidency. Born in Belfast, she was formerly a journalist with broadcaster, RTÉ, and at the time of her nomination, she was Pro-Vice Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast. Two other candidates, Albert Reynolds and Michael O'Kennedy, had also sought the Fianna Fáil nomination. Reynolds was a former Taoiseach while O'Kennedy was a former cabinet minister having served in the Finance and Foreign Affairs portfolios. Both were also sitting TDs which was seen as an advantage. In the first round of voting, Reynolds received 49 votes, McAleese 42, and O'Kennedy 21. In the second round, McAleese won, with 62 votes to Reynolds's 48. McAleese was later also endorsed by the Progressive Democrats, the smaller party in the coalition government with Fianna Fáil.
Mary Banotti
Mary Banotti was nominated by Fine Gael. She was the grand-niece of the former Irish leader, Michael Collins, and sister of the deputy leader of the party, Nora Owen. She defeated colleague Avril Doyle for the party nomination in a very close contest. Banotti, who was an MEP at the time, was the only serving politician among the five presidential candidates.
Adi Roche
Adi Roche, who had founded Chernobyl Children International in 1991, was nominated by the Labour Party. Roche was later endorsed by Democratic Left and the Green Party. At 42 years of age, she was and is the youngest person to stand in an Irish presidential election.
Dana Rosemary Scallon
Dana Rosemary Scallon received the nominations of five county councils: Donegal, Kerry, Longford, North Tipperary and Wicklow. Scallon was a singer, the winner of the 1970 Eurovision Song Contest, and a family values campaigner. She was the first candidate in any Irish presidential election to have been nominated by local authorities, rather than by Oireachtas members.
Derek Nally
Derek Nally was the fifth candidate to join the presidential race and the only male candidate. He was a retired Garda and victims' rights campaigner. He also received the nominations of five county councils: Carlow, Clare, Kildare, South Dublin and Wexford.
Campaign
The Presidential campaign, held before the forthcoming Good Friday Agreement of 1998, would become dominated by Northern Ireland issues and questions about candidates' views on Irish Republicanism.
McAleese enjoyed the full backing of the powerful Fianna Fáil electoral machine, and she emphasised her north–south background amid fragile peace prospects, while Banotti stressed her parliamentary experience and family legacy (Banotti was the grand-niece of Michael Collins). Roche campaigned on her international humanitarian credentials. Scallon ran a grassroots "people's campaign" spotlighting family values, and Nally's platform centred on victims’ rights and policing reform.
Adi Roche entered the race in good standing on the back of her charitable work, and initially polled extremely well at 38%, raising the possibility of another upset win by the Labour Party. However, Roche's campaign was severely undermined by a covert smear campaign focused on her brother Dónal de Róiste, a former Army officer who had been summarily and controversially dismissed from the Defence Forces in 1969. Anonymous letters and phone calls were circulated to media outlets during the campaign, suggesting links between her brother and Irish republican paramilitaries. Though no evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced and the allegations were later discredited, the innuendo damaged Roche's polling badly, falling down to 7% shortly before election day. She ultimately placed fourth out of five candidates. In later years, Roche described the experience as traumatising and politically vicious, noting it had a long-lasting impact on her self-confidence. Her brother was formally exonerated and issued a State apology in 2022 after a government review found his dismissal had been legally flawed and procedurally unjust.
Likewise, Mary McAleese was also peppered with questions relating to possible links to Irish republicanism. Questions about Mary McAleese's attitude to Sinn Féin first emerged when the Sunday Business Post of 12 October 1997 published leaked Department of Foreign Affairs memos suggesting she had expressed pleasure at Sinn Féin's electoral performance and would not back a presidential contest without a Sinn Féin–SDLP pact. The memos were quickly seized upon by rival candidate Derek Nally, who accused McAleese of operating "a different set of moral assumptions" compared to "most Irish people", and demanded she explain whether she had ever voted for or supported Sinn Féin. Further speculation mounted following 16 October, when President of Sinn Féin Gerry Adams stated his preferred candidate was McAleese.
On RTÉ's Questions and Answers, journalist Geraldine Kennedy pressed her directly, asking "Did you ever vote for Sinn Féin?". McAleese strenuously denied the accuracy of the leaked documents, issuing a statement through her campaign that she had never voted for Sinn Féin and repudiating any implication of republican sympathy. She subsequently challenged the department official responsible for the leak to legal action, though no lawsuit ensued. The Irish Times editorial later urged her to provide "the frankest explanation" of her views on Sinn Féin and the broader peace process if confidence in her fitness for office was to be restored. Despite the intensity of the controversy, no evidence emerged to substantiate the allegations.
During the campaign, Derek Nally, a former garda and long-standing critic of police brutality, claimed that a group of former gardaí had threatened his life. He called on these individuals to identify themselves, stating: "I want to be able to identify the people who are making the threats and identify my possible assassins". The threat, discussed on RTÉ's Prime Time, allegedly came from those angered by Nally's past whistleblowing against the so-called "heavy gang" within the Garda Síochána in the 1970s. He insisted the group's motives were linked to his efforts back then to expose prisoner mistreatment and misconduct, which he had brought to the attention of then-Minister for Justice Paddy Cooney. Nally also drew parallels with alleged smear attempts against fellow candidate Adi Roche, suggesting there was a campaign by ex-gardaí to undermine certain candidates. However, both the Garda Representative Association and the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors denied any knowledge of such a plot.