She may want to balance her use of Irish with making sure her speech is inclusive. It’s a good bet that at least half the speech will be in Irish. a president can have a theme,” the fifth president, Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh, said in his inaugural speech. Will she refer, as Éamon de Valera did in his 1966 inauguration, to “the political unity which we so desire”? In 2018, Higgins quoted a prior speech of his own and an unfulfilled promise of the first Dáil in 1919.

Source: The Irish Times November 10, 2025 19:44 UTC