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LAST UPDATE | 10 Nov 2025
AT MIDNIGHT, PRESIDENT Michael D Higgins’s term in office will come to an end.
Tomorrow, Catherine Connolly will be officially inaugurated as the tenth President of Ireland after a landslide election victory last month.
Today, ahead of his term coming to an end, President Higgins and his wife Sabina thanked the many members of the public who have written to them to wish them well as the President tonight completes his term of office.
And as President Higgins’s 14-year stint in the Áras draws to a close, we take a look back at a presidency that has also inspired memes and tea cosies.
While this year’s presidential election only featured three candidates (and this became two after Jim Gavin’s withdrawal) it was a larger affair in 2011.
There were seven candidates in the field and while opinion polls had Seán Gallagher out in front, it was President Higgins who won the election.
Here he is celebrating after his election victory was announced in Dublin Castle in 2011. The turnout was 56% and President Higgins gained close to 40% of the first preference votes.
And on 11 November, 2011 he was officially inaugurated as President of Ireland in a ceremony at Dublin Castle, taking over from Mary McAleese.
He and his wife Sabina were joined in Áras an Uachtaráin by a cast of Bernese Mountain dogs, who soon became a beloved fixture at the Aras, greeting dignitaries and interrupting events in pursuit of belly rubs.
Here he is with Germany president Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2021 with Bród and Misneach.
Bród died in April 2023, aged 11.
Yesterday, members of the public gathered outside Áras an Uachtaráin with their Bernese Mountain Dogs to wish President Higgins, Sabina and Misneach well ahead of the conclusion of the President’s term.
Impromptu tribute to President Higgins on his way to Remembrance Sunday service by Bernaise and other dog owners. Fitting tribute to great president. @PresidentIRL pic.twitter.com/vk1KmwhELc
— conor power (@thatpower) November 9, 2025
His first term also saw some milestones in Anglo-Irish relations, and in April 2014 he became the first President of Ireland to make a state visit to the United Kingdom, during which he delivered an historic address at Westminster.
Later that day, in his toast during a state banquet hosted by Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle he described the trip as “a very visible sign of the warmth and maturity of the relationship between our two countries”.
In 2018, he welcomed Pope Francis to Áras an Uachtaráin during the first papal visit to Ireland in 40 years.
Higgins told the pontiff of the anger felt by those in Ireland who were abused as children by Catholic clerics.
The two met on five occasions and during a trip to the Vatican in 2021, the late Francis said of President Higgins: “Today I did not just meet a man, a President, I met a wise man of today. I thank God that Ireland has such a wise man as its head.”
Below are the two after their last meeting at the Vatican in 2023.
As his first term came to an end in 2018, he announced he would seek a second despite previously saying he would not run again.
President Higgins stood as an independent candidate but was backed by Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Labour, who agreed not to field their own candidates.
He instead faced a Sinn Féin candidate and four independents but won with 55% of the vote.
Here he is hugging his wife Sabina after being re-elected on 27 October, 2018.
And around two weeks later, he was inaugurated as president for a second time.
In February 2024 when he was 82, President Higgins spent over a week in hospital for what was later revealed to be a mild stroke.
He cut back on public appearances for a number of weeks and was later seen in public using two walking sticks.
The final few weeks of his presidency involved another hospital stay, this time to treat an infection.
The Remembrance Sunday Service in St Patrick’s was among his very first public engagements following his election to his first term in office in 2011.
President Higgins and his wife intend to return to Galway following 14 years at Áras an Uachtaráin.
Last week, he invited Connolly and her family to Áras an Uachtaráin ahead of her inauguration tomorrow.
The pair have a somewhat complicated history after Connolly left the Labour Party when it opted to run just one candidate in the Galway West constituency for the 2007 general election, where Higgins was a sitting TD.
However, the reception last week was warm and marked with smiles and laughter, with President Higgins wishing Connolly “health and happiness”.
Tonight, he departed Áras an Uachtaráin for the final time, and took some time to explore the Áras before leaving.
But perhaps one of the enduring images of President Higgins’s time in office will be the 2016 image of him perched on a BMX as two young men on either side of him prepare to whoosh down a halfpipe.
Michael Donnelly, a freelance photographer based in Co. Kildare, told The Journal back in 2017 that no media outlet took him up on the opportunity to feature the image in its publication.
But he knew himself that he had something special on his hands; he shared the image on Facebook and it quickly spread like wildfire.
President Michael D Higgins also became immortalised as President Michael ‘Tea’ Higgins thanks to a popular tea cosy bearing his image.
Susan Banks from Tallaght is among those who make the tea cosies and she has already been inundated with requests for President Catherine Connoll-Tea.
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