Lenihan entered the race as odds-on favourite; no Fianna Fáil candidate had ever lost a presidential election. However Lenihan was derailed when he confirmed in an on-the-record interview with freelance journalist and academic researcher Jim Duffy that he had been involved in controversial attempts to pressurise President Hillery over a controversial parliamentary dissolution in 1982. When the contrast between his public denials during the campaign and his confirmation during his earlier interview (recorded in May) he was dismissed from the Irish government. In a shock outcome, Labour's Mary Robinson beat Austin Currie, forcing Fine Gael's candidate into a humiliating third place. Robinson then beat Lenihan on transfers on the second count, to become the seventh president of Ireland.
But party leader Pat Rabbitte appeared less committed in a television interview in November 2003, pointing out that all its attentions were focused on the two Irishelections already guaranteed in 2004, the European elections and the local elections to be held on 11 June.
Following her defeat in the European Parliament election of June 2004, 1997 candidate Dana Rosemary Scallon indicated that she might also run as an independent presidential candidate on a platform of opposition to the adoption of the proposed European Union constitution.
She initially attempted to repeat her 1997 strategy of seeking nominations from four county councils, and approached all the county councils in the country but was rebuffed.
One ancestor was a leading activist in the Irish National Land League of Mayo and the Irish Republican Brotherhood; an uncle, Sir Paget John Bourke, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II after a career as a judge in the Colonial Service; while another relative was a Catholic nun.
Robinson was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland on 3 December 1990.
She visited Irish nuns and priests abroad, Irish famine relief charities, attended international sports events, met the Pope and, to the fury of the People's Republic of China, met Tenzin Gyatso (the 14th Dalai Lama).
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