Which Irish president has had the longest tenure in office? |
Ireland - Ireland FAQs and Trivia | |||
Written by Hugh McManus | |||
Warning: mktime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08az/b29/ipw.wellbeyo/public_html/libraries/joomla/utilities/date.php on line 119 Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08az/b29/ipw.wellbeyo/public_html/libraries/joomla/utilities/date.php on line 247 Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08az/b29/ipw.wellbeyo/public_html/libraries/joomla/utilities/date.php on line 251 Warning: strftime(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /hermes/bosnacweb08/bosnacweb08az/b29/ipw.wellbeyo/public_html/libraries/joomla/utilities/date.php on line 252 Wednesday, 02 December 2009 07:06 |
|||
Which Irish president has had the longest tenure in office? (It's close, the victor wins by just one day.) The answer is a Éamon de Valera, by one day. Éamon de Valera served in office for 5113 days; his predecessor, Seán T. O'Kelly, was president for 5112 days, as was Patrick Hillery, Ireland's sixth president and Mary McAleese, the nation's eight person to hold the office. President de Valera wins because there were four Leap Years during his presidency; Hillery, O'Kelly and McAleese only had three Leap Years during their respective terms in office.
The first four presidents all assumed office on June 25. President McAleese is the world's first female elected head of state to succeed another female elected head of state. You take your victories where you can get them. So, what does the current president, Michael D. Higgins have to do to equal or surpass President de Valera? First, he has to stay in office until he is 84 years old: he was born on April 18, 1941, the day on which Yugoslavia surrendered to Germany. He has a shot. Just like President de Valera, President Higgins will have four Leap Years during two terms of office; he could potentially beat de Valera by a day. I suspect that it won't happen as many expect him to retire after one term in office.
|