Fine Gael Presidential Candidate Heather Humphreys – is her family’s Orange Order Background relevant?
Irish Presidential Elections – Dirty Personalised Attacks
Irish presidential elections have a history of dirty personalised attacks.
The 2025 campaign will feature similar personalised attacks. The Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys was a right-wing minister in recent governments. Her family background includes relatives who were members of a reactionary far-right organisation, the Orange Order. The problem here is that nobody can control their family origins. Every living Irish person can go back a few decades and discover nasty skeletons in the cupboard. Humphreys, who favours ending the partition of Ireland, is no exception.
Sometimes the personalised attacks work, on other occasions they backfired.
During the 1990 campaign Fianna Fáil discovered to their horror that their candidate Brian Lenihan was likely to lose the contest to Mary Robinson, a candidate nominated by the Labour party. Government minister Padraig Flynn stated that Robinson had “a new-found interest in her family”. It went down very badly. Robinson, a lawyer who had a civil rights and feminist background, became the Irish state’s first female president, and the first candidate who defeated a Fianna Fáil candidate in the race to live for 7 years in the luxurious Áras an Úachtaráin in the Phoenix Park.
In 1997 the canny Fianna Fáil party nominated a female lawyer and journalist, Mary MacAleese, who was born in the six-county bit of Ireland. The new FF candidate was anti-abortion and had a human rights record on other issues. This prompted an anonymous campaign claiming that MacAleese was a closet supporter of the IRA’s armed campaign during “The Troubles”. A separate campaign was launched against the Labour Party’s candidate Adi Roche claiming, amongst other things, that her brother was thrown out of the Irish state’s army in the early 1970’s for supporting armed defence of the nationalist minority in the six counties. The anti-Roche smear worked, but MacAleese stormed to victory. The Fine Gael party is the number one suspect for originating these personalised attacks, but this was never proved.
In 2011 an independent candidate Seán Gallagher seemed certain of victory until devastating evidence entered the public arena via a six-county businessperson, Mr Morgan from Armagh. Gallagher was a bagman for the Fianna Fáil party, and had relieved Mr Morgan of a substantial amount of money without returning a favour. Mr Morgan was wealthy, deeply involved in the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA), and was a sponsor of his county team, Armagh. In Mr Gallagher’s trade you don’t mess with wealthy men, a lesson the candidate learned to his cost.
During a famous TV broadcast featuring all the wannabe presidents, the Sinn Féin nominee Martin McGuinness spooked Gallagher into further admissions of dubious financial misbehaviour. The beneficiary was the Labour party candidate Michael D Higgins who won two presidential elections in a row. This election also featured an ugly damaging attack against the gay human rights campaigner David Norris, which was probably initiated by the Israeli state.
Family Background of Heather Humphreys Does Not Matter
Micheál MacDonncha, a Sinn Féin member of Dublin City Council, makes a number of valid points on this issue, and his statement is worth reproducing in full :
Heather Humphreys :
I see a lot of people commenting on the background of Heather Humphreys, the Fine Gael presidential candidate. I would like to make a few points:
• I welcome her statement that she supports and wants to see a United Ireland and does so as a citizen from a Presbyterian and Unionist background. She needs to go on now and support the Citizens Assembly and the push for a referendum date.
• In that context her family connections with the Orange Order – whether during the conflict or not – don’t matter to me. We need to win over people from that tradition to the side of Irish unity. However, if she sought to mislead people on this connection then that of course is unacceptable.
• I will not be voting for Heather Humphreys because she is a Fine Gael candidate and has been part of this regressive and incompetent Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil government.
• I will also not be voting for her because as Minister for Heritage she followed her predecessors in their neglect of the historic Moore Street 1916 battlefield site. She promised that the commemorative centre for 14-17 Moore Street would be ready in 2016. We are still waiting.
• I bear her no ill-will personally and wish her and her family well. I met her once when as Ardmhéara Bhaile Átha Cliath (mayor of Dublin City) I attended the state commemoration for hunger striker Thomas Ashe in Glasnevin Cemetery and she attended as Minister.
The Orange Order Today – Racist, Sectarian, Anti-Choice – and Funded by the Irish State
Today, in modern times, the Orange Order continues to be a reactionary player in Irish politics. Every summer it sponsors hate-filled marches in the six-county bit of Ireland, sparking a mass exodus from the statelet. These events are not , in the main, innocent “picnics”.
In 2018, after decades of struggle, Irish women won a tremendous victory by removing a reactionary anti-abortion ban from the Irish constitution. During that long struggle a significant number of people from a protestant background participated in numerous feminist-inspired human rights struggles.
The Orange Order was on the other reactionary side, alongside its evil twin, the Catholic hierarchy. In 2018, along with a number of other right-wing religious organisations, the Orange Order opposed repealing the anti-abortion 8th amendment from the Irish constitution.
In 2025 the Orange Order is part and parcel of a dangerous blending : traditional anti-Catholic sectarianism is mixing with far-right mobilisations against immigrants. For example, residents of Ballymena who are not “British” are forced to fly Union Jacks outside their houses to discourage racist arson attacks.
Links :
For the information of readers, Here is an excellent 2004 Suzanne Breen article published in the Sunday Tribune. In 2025, there are changes, but they are not positive.
Lying low for the North’s Mardi Gras
(by Suzanne Breen, Sunday Tribune)
“The Twelfth is just a fun family day out, a harmless cultural expression of Protestantism? Bullshit!” says Larne SDLP councillor Danny O’Connor.
“The Twelfth is just a fun family day out, a harmless cultural expression of Protestantism? Bullshit!” says Larne SDLP councillor Danny O’Connor.
Tomorrow, tens of thousands of Orangemen will march in 19 different locations across the North. It’s the highlight of the year for many working-class loyalists – “better than Christmas”, says Ernie Duddy from Belfast.
“It’s a Protestant Mardi Gras,” says a Queen’s University academic. “There’s music, the masses dress up in fancy costume, and lots of people get very drunk.” For Catholics like O’Connor, who live in loyalist areas, it’s a far from pleasant experience.
For the Twelfth, Larne becomes a loyalist shrine. The town centre is a sea of red-white-and-blue bunting. Minimalism hasn’t caught on here. In the housing estates, there are thousands of flags – UVF flags, UFF flags, Ulster flags, Young Citizen Volunteer flags.
There’s a saying about keeping your head as low as a Larne Catholic. At the Twelfth, the heads must go even lower. “Entertainment in the Catholic Club in Larne is cancelled for the next fortnight and there’s nowhere else that it’s safe for us socialise,” says O’Connor.
“People will baton down the hatches. They’ll close their curtains, turn up the TV and pray the Twelfth passes quickly.” He says the local UDA takes great pleasure in erecting flags outside Catholic homes.
“A flag is just a bit of cloth and that never hurt anyone. But when a Catholic looks out their window and sees that the guys who’ve petrol-bombed their neighbour’s home are putting up the flags, they know the message behind it. The police are just letting this happen.”
Earlier this week, O’Connor’s mother challenged men erecting an Ulster flag outside her home in the Craigy Hill Estate. “Fuck off back into your house or we’ll put you in the grave, you old bitch,” they told her. Rosaleen O’Connor, who has asthma, started hyper-ventilating and ended up in hospital.
Many Larne Catholics head off for the Twelfth, O’Connor says. “Bundoran is buzzing with Larne people at this time of year. But you can’t go far if you’re old, sick or on the dole.
“And many people are scared to go away. The McAuley’s went to Spain last year. When they returned, their house was a shell. It’d been burned down. There are Catholic families who still sleep with buckets of water at the top of the stairs.”
Former Irish international rugby star and Ballymena DUP councillor, Davy Tweed, sees the Twelfth very differently: “It’s not about sectarianism, intimidation or trampling on anybody’s rights. It’s an enjoyable family day out.
“I first marched when I was eight-years-old and joined Dunloy Accordion Band. I was very excited about it. My father and grandfather were Orangemen. I’d been practising the accordion for months. You had to know three tunes before you could march.
“I’d black trousers, a black jacket, a crimson tie, and a white shirt. Everything had to be spick and span. It was a wonderful day.” Tweed remained in the Order during his rugby career.
“I never hid my membership from anyone in the sporting world. I’m proud to be an Orangeman and I’ll be one to the day I die. The media is very negative about the Order and so a lot of people end up ignorant.
“The Orange Order is about the Christian faith and principles of equality and tolerance. It makes a wonderful contribution to society. It brings discipline into the lives of young men.”
Hugh Keenan, a Catholic from Belfast’s leafy Malone Road, disagrees: “Have you seen the state of the streets after the Twelfth – the litter, the vomit, the urine? It’s disgraceful our city is brought to a standstill for a day for these people, and business in Northern Ireland closes down for a week.”
There is speculation that, after tomorrow’s parade in Belfast, Orangemen will block roads in and out of the city in protest at the Parades Commission’s decision to place restrictions on a march close to Ardoyne.
A Protestant businessman from Ballyclare defends the Twelfth: “Nationalists need to grow up. They talk about cultural diversity, equality and tolerance but, in reality, they don’t want anything Protestant about them.
“There will always be some bad behaviour during any major event. I’m sure the Notting Hill Carnival is no different. But the Twelfth is an overwhelmingly peaceful day. Nationalists are obviously too bigoted to allow Christian brethren to celebrate their identity once a year.”
Back in Larne, Danny O’Connor remains unconvinced: “If the Orange Order want to march through the streets wearing silly bowler hats and carrying umbrellas then that’s fine.
“Our problem is with all the other stuff surrounding it. Look around these streets – in Larne, the Twelfth isn’t about enjoyment, it’s about intimidation. You can see it, you can feel it, it’s in the air.”
July 11, 2004
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This article appeared in the July 11, 2004 edition of the Sunday Tribune.
Conservative forces running the Irish state pander to the Orange Order through the tried and trusted method of bribery. Total Irish government funding to the Orange Order since 2012 is estimated to be worth €2.5. It is claimed this modernises Twelfth of July celebrations and enhances community engagement. This is nonsense. The funding should cease immediately.
John Meehan September 18 2025
Tomás Ó Flatharta 
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