The President of Ireland has the right to appoint a maximum of seven members of the Council of State, which advises the President in exercising certain reserve powers. As well as the seven (or fewer) appointees, the Council has seven ex officio members and a variable number of life members by right of former office. An appointed member's term ends not at the end of that Presidential term, but rather at the beginning of the next one, which will be some weeks later if the previous President has died or resigned. A new or re-elected President may re-appoint members. If an appointed member accedes to one of the positions conferring ex officio membership of the Council, this creates a vacancy which the President may fill via another appointment.
History
The first President, Douglas Hyde, who took office in 1938, did not nominate members till the Council first met in January 1940; all six nominees were Oireachtas members, and not members of the Fianna Fáil government party.
For long, Presidents included senior serving politicians on the Council. Éamon de Valera said during the 1937 debate on the proposed Constitution, "this Council of State ... will ordinarily contain the leaders of the big Parties in the Dáil." Upon Richard Mulcahy's 1971 death, de Valera invited Fine Gael leader Liam Cosgrave to join but Cosgrave declined. Fine Gael objected in 1991 that Mary Robinson had become the first President not to have the Leader of the Opposition in the Council. Robinson had promised to appoint two representatives of the Opposition, In early 1995, after the Fianna Fáil-led government was replaced by a Fine Gael-led government without a general election, Mary Robinson asked Monica Barnes of Fine Gael to resign from the council of state to allow Mary O'Rourke of Fianna Fáil to be appointed instead to increase the Opposition voice. The Oireachtas Committee on the Constitution issued a 1998 report dealing with the Presidency, which recommended that the President be "empowered to nominate two members of the Dáil who belong to parties other than the party or parties that form the government for the life of that government".
Early Presidents included one or two representatives of minorities; there were several of Anglo-Irish, Protestant, or ex-Unionist backgrounds, and the Jewish Bob Briscoe. Prior to 1990, Presidents generally reappointed members from the previous term; new members were appointed only when a vacancy arose by a previous appointee's death or accession to ex-officio membership. Patrick Hillery considered new appointees upon assuming office in 1976, and was advised there was no precedent for informing former Councillors of their exclusion; Hillery decided "it would be too hurtful to drop any of the members". Robinson abandoned this practice by appointing seven new members; For his second term he appointed seven first-timers.
During the 2011 presidential election campaign, candidate Mary Davis, best known for her Special Olympics activism, pledged to nominate a person with intellectual disability to the Council. This proposal attracted some criticism as tokenism, but was endorsed by Fergus Finlay. During a debate on The Late Late Show, candidates were later asked whether they thought Denis O'Brien would be "a suitable person to be on the Council of State". After the victory of Labour Party candidate Michael D. Higgins, the party denied that its leader Eamon Gilmore had suggested nominees to Higgins.
List
{|class="wikitable sortable" style="font-size:95%";
|-
! Appointee
! Term
!
! Date appointed
! Date ceased
! Role on appointment; notes
! Sources<br />
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| TD, initially for Fine Gael, later Independent
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Independent Senator. Anglo-Irish Baronet.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Labour Party leader
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Clann na Talmhan leader
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
| ?
| Leader of the Opposition
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
| ?
|
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
| ?
|
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Fianna Fáil minister.
|
|-
|
| 3
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
| 3
|
|
|
| Died in office
|
|-
|
| 1
|
| 1956
|
| Anglo-Irish, grandson of Edward King-Harman; owned the Rockingham Estate, now Lough Key Forest Park
|
|-
|
| 1
|
| ?
|
| Anglo-Irish Fine Gael TD
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
|
| Died in office
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Former Mayor of Limerick. Died in office.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Former Governor-General of the Irish Free State. Died in office.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Jewish Fianna Fáil TD. Replaced Robert Farnan.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
| ?
| Labour Party leader. Replaced William Norton.
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
|
| Died in office
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
|
| Became Tánaiste, and ex-officio member of the Council, after the 1973 general election.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Labour Party minister. Replaced Brendan Corish.
|
|-
|
| 2
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
| 4
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
| 4
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
| 5
|
|
|
|
|
|-
|
| 7
|
|
|
| Died in office
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Fine Gael leader of the Opposition
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Barrister and former Independent Senator
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Fine Gael TD
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Fine Gael TD. Resigned to make way for Mary O'Rourke.
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Fianna Fáil MEP
|
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Chair of the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Provost and Dean of Academic Development, Magee College, University of Ulster
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Disability activist
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Social policy academic at NUI Maynooth
|
|-
| <span data-sort-value="Ocuirreain"></span>
| 1
|
|
|
| Journalist and former Coimisinéir Teanga
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Sociologist, activist and professor emeritus of equality studies at University College Dublin
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Established Professor of Law in the School of Law, University of Galway
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| Professor of Law, University College Cork, former Special Rapporteur on Child Protection
|
|-
|
| 1
|
|
|
| former President of University of Galway
|
|}
See also
- Nominated members of Seanad Éireann, nominated by the Taoiseach