Michael D Higgins: Ireland’s ‘eclectic titular leader’

US President Joe Biden is due to meet his Irish counterpart Michael D. Higgins today as part of his trip to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

Biden will meet Higgins at his official residence, Áras an Uachtaráin in Phoenix Park, Dublin, after visiting the home provinces of his Irish ancestors, including County Louth and County Mayo.

Higgins, “known affectionately all over Ireland as Michael D”, said The Guardian, has been Ireland’s president since 2011, winning a second term in 2018.

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Though best known for his political career, the 81-year-old is also a notable poet and writer. Higgins has also been an avid campaigner for human rights and social issues who was never “afraid of making his views known”; “no issue was ever too small” for him, said The Irish Times.

Who is Michael D Higgins?

Higgins was born in 1941 in Limerick, west Ireland, the second youngest of four children. Living in poverty after his father’s health deteriorated, he was sent at the age of five with his younger brother to live with his uncle and aunt on a farm in Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare.

After leaving secondary school he worked in a factory before becoming a clerk for the Electricity Supply Board in Galway in 1961. It was there that a colleague “gave him £200 to study at University College, Galway”, said The Irish Times, gaining a degree in commerce and economics. Higgins later studied at Indiana University Bloomington in the US where he acquired a degree in sociology. He has “always felt the duty and responsibility of the education he got”, said the Irish Independent, telling the paper that he “was the only member of my family who had the opportunities”.

Higgins’ first foray into politics came through “the marches and demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s” and his “profound belief in human rights and equality”, said the Irish Independent. He made bids for a seat in the Dáil Éireann, the lower house of the Irish assembly, and was involved in “reviving the Labour Party” in 1969, said The Irish Times. He met Sabina Coyne that year and they married in 1974. They have four children.

He was first elected to the Dáil Éireann in 1981 but lost his seat just a year later, eventually being re-elected in 1987 after which he held his seat until 2011. Higgins was “on the more radical wing” of the Irish Labour Party, but he always “maintained links which transcended political differences”, added The Irish Times.

Many of his accomplishments during that time went beyond political policies, including “establishing the Irish-language TV station TG4, reinvigorating the Irish film industry, ending the section 31 censorship regime that barred Sinn Féin from the Republic’s airwaves, and overseeing investment in public museums”, said The Guardian.

Time as president

Higgins was elected president in 2011 after projecting “himself as a grandfather figure rising above all the controversies of the presidential campaign”, said The Guardian, predicting he would be an “eclectic titular leader of his country”.

His first act as president was to “ask for his salary to be cut by almost a quarter” to around €250,000, said the Irish Examiner. One of the most significant moments of his first term came in 2014. On a state visit to Britain he became the first Irish president to address the Houses of Parliament, saying Britain and Ireland “now have a closeness that once seemed unachievable”.

Higgins announced in 2018 he would stand again as an independent, having “met all of the demands of the office”, said RTE. He was “re-elected in an exuberant victory”, said the Irish Independent, winning 55.8% of the vote.

During the Biden visit, the pair will inspect a military guard of honour, plant an oak tree to mark the occasion and ring the Bell of Peace.

“It is unclear whether there will be a photo-opportunity involving the two men and Higgins’ popular and much-loved dogs Bród and Misneach,” said the BBC.