Mary Patricia McAleese (; née Leneghan; born 27 June 1951) is an Irish activist lawyer, academic, author, and former politician who served as the president of Ireland from November 1997 to November 2011. McAleese was first elected as president in 1997, having received the nomination of Fianna Fáil. She succeeded Mary Robinson, making her the second female president of Ireland and the first woman in the world to succeed another woman as president. She nominated herself for re-election in 2004 and was returned unopposed for a second term. Born in Ardoyne, north Belfast, she is the first president of Ireland to have come from Ulster.
McAleese graduated in law from Queen's University Belfast. In 1975, she was appointed Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology at Trinity College Dublin, and in 1987 she returned to her alma mater, Queen's, to become director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. In 1994, she became the first female pro-vice-chancellor of Queen's University. She worked as a barrister and as a journalist with RTÉ. She is an Honorary Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. She has also earned a doctorate in Catholic canon law.
McAleese used her time in office to address issues concerning justice, social equality, social inclusion, anti-sectarianism and reconciliation. She described her presidency's theme as "Building Bridges". This bridge-building materialised in her attempts to reach out to the unionist community in Northern Ireland. These steps included celebrating the Twelfth of July at Áras an Uachtaráin and taking Communion in a Church of Ireland cathedral in Dublin, for which she incurred some criticism from some of the Irish Catholic hierarchy. Though a Catholic, McAleese holds liberal views on homosexuality and women priests. She is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders and was ranked the 64th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes. In spite of some minor controversies, McAleese remained popular, and her presidency is regarded as successful.
Born Mary Patricia Leneghan (Irish: Máire Pádraigín Ní Lionnacháin), in Ardoyne, north Belfast to Paddy Leneghan from Croghan, County Roscommon and Claire McManus from County Antrim. She is a Catholic but grew up in a largely Protestant neighbourhood. Loyalists forced her family to leave the area when the Troubles broke out. She was educated at St Dominic's High School, an all-girls Catholic grammar school in Belfast. She studied law at Queen's University Belfast, graduating in 1973 with a Bachelor of Laws (LLB Hons) degree. She was called to the Bar of Northern Ireland in 1974, and was later called to the Irish Bar.
In 1976, she married Martin McAleese, an accountant and dentist. He assisted his wife with some of her initiatives as president. They have three children. Ahead of the 2015 marriage equality referendum, her son spoke publicly about growing up gay.
Every year she spends some time with the Poor Clares.
In 1975, having spent a year as a practising barrister in Belfast, she was appointed Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Criminology and Penology in Trinity College Dublin, succeeding Mary Robinson. Also in 1975, McAleese chaired a meeting at Liberty Hall that advocated a woman's right to choose and was quoted as saying that "I would see the failure to provide abortion as a human rights issue". She later claimed that she was given to understand that the nature of the meeting was to be a discussion among all sides and opinions.
During the same decade, she was a legal advisor to and a founding member of the Campaign for Homosexual Law Reform. She left this position in 1979, to join RTÉ as a journalist and presenter, during one period as a reporter and presenter for their Frontline replaced by Today Tonight in 1980 programme. However, in RTÉ, she and Alex White (then a TV producer and later a Labour Party TD) were attacked and criticised by a group led by Eoghan Harris, associated with the Workers' Party, over what they perceived as her bias towards republican groups in the North. McAleese was critical of the Provisional IRA, but believed it was important to hear their side of the story; she opposed the Harris faction's support for Section 31 (preventing RTÉ interviews with spokespersons for Sinn Féin and the IRA), which she believed was an attack on free speech. In 1981, she returned to the Reid Professorship, but continued to work part-time for RTÉ for a further four years. In 1987, she returned to Queen's University, to become Director of the Institute of Professional Legal Studies. She stood, unsuccessfully, as a Fianna Fáil candidate in Dublin South-East at the 1987 general election, receiving 2,243 votes (5.9%).
In 1987, McAleese was a prominent opponent of the proposal to ratify the Single European Act during the referendum campaign for the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland.
McAleese has a long-standing involvement in ecumenism and anti-sectarianism. She co-chaired the working party on sectarianism set up by the Irish Inter-Church Meeting in 1991 and its report (1993) was described by Professor Marianne Elliot as "the most notable" work of the Inter-Church Meetings. McAleese was the author and presenter of a successful BBC Radio Ulster series called "The Protestant Mind" which encouraged the divided communities in Northern Ireland to try to stand in each other's shoes. McAleese was a member of the Catholic Church Episcopal Delegation to the New Ireland Forum in 1984, and a member of the Catholic Church delegation to the Northern Ireland Commission on Contentious Parades in 1996. She was also a delegate to the 1995 White House Conference on Trade and Investment in Ireland and to the subsequent Pittsburgh Conference in 1996. She became the Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University Belfast. Prior to becoming president in 1997, McAleese had also held the following positions: Channel 4 Television, Director, Northern Ireland Electricity, Director, Royal Group of Hospitals Trust and Founding member of the Irish Commission for Prisoners Overseas.
McAleese is a member of the Council of Women World Leaders, an international network of current and former women Presidents and Prime Ministers, whose mission is to mobilise the highest-level women leaders globally for collective action on issues of critical importance to women and equitable development.
In 1997, McAleese defeated former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and former minister Michael O'Kennedy in an internal party election held to determine the Fianna Fáil nomination for the Irish presidency.
Her opponents in the 1997 presidential election were Mary Banotti, nominated by Fine Gael, Adi Roche nominated by the Labour Party, Democratic Left and the Green Party, and two candidates standing as Independents nominated by local authorities: Dana Rosemary Scallon and Derek Nally. McAleese won 45.2% of first preference votes. In the second and final count, McAleese was elected having obtained 55.6% of votes against Banotti. On 11 November 1997, she was inaugurated as the eighth President of Ireland. Within weeks of this, she made her first official overseas trip to Lebanon.
McAleese described the theme of her presidency as "building bridges". The first individual born in Northern Ireland to become President of Ireland, President McAleese was a regular visitor to Northern Ireland throughout her presidency, where she was on the whole warmly welcomed by both communities, confounding critics who had believed she would be a divisive figure. People from Northern Ireland, indeed people from right across the nine-county Province of Ulster, were regular and recurring visitors to Áras an Uachtaráin while she was president. She is also an admirer of Queen Elizabeth II, whom she came to know when she was Pro-Vice-Chancellor of Queen's University of Belfast. In March 1998, President McAleese stated that she would officially celebrate the Twelfth of July as well as Saint Patrick's Day, recognising the day's importance among Ulster Protestants.