DUBLIN — Former EU Commissioner Mairead McGuinness and left-wing lawmaker Catherine Connolly have confirmed they want to be Ireland’s next president — but the field could grow crowded as bigger names join the battle.

It’s extremely early days in an election that must happen by November but has yet to be called. Speculation is rife that the contest could feature one, or both, of the two biggest beasts in parliament: Fianna Fáil party leader Prime Minister Micheál Martin, and Sinn Féin opposition leader Mary Lou McDonald. Neither have ruled themselves in or out.

Ireland’s presidency comes with a stately manor and a stable seven-year term, but it’s a largely ceremonial role independent of real-world government that makes it a potential magnet for anti-establishment votes. Since 2011 it has served as a socialist soapbox for Labour Party grandee Michael D. Higgins, who is one of Ireland’s most popular political figures but is constitutionally barred from running again.

While McGuinness will benefit from early-frontrunner energy as Ireland’s top figure on the European stage, her Europhile and center-right Fine Gael party has never won Ireland’s presidency.

The 66-year-old former agriculture journalist, who confirmed her candidacy on Tuesday, has wanted to be president since at least 2011, when she failed to win Fine Gael’s nomination on her first try. McGuinness has just finished two well-regarded decades in Brussels as an Irish MEP, and served from 2020 to 2024 as the European Commission’s financial services chief.

Her record of sensible competence might not count for much in an Ireland that typically elects pragmatic, center-ground coalition governments while seeking out more idealistic presidents who can moralize from the sidelines.

In that vein, the ideologically closer successor to Higgins would be Connolly, a 68-year-old socialist lawmaker who has represented Galway West as an independent opposition lawmaker since 2016. She quit the left-of-center Labour Party a decade before that, when she was barred from seeking a parliamentary seat in competition with Higgins.

Connolly, who launched her election campaign Wednesday, specializes in anti-government speeches delivered with high-minded indignance and often in Ireland’s official but relatively little-used native tongue.

A potential vote-winner for Connolly could be her trenchant criticism of Israel in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip and its support for West Bank settlers. She has also expressed hostility to NATO following Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Her pro-neutrality and often anti-Western agenda could prove a point of attack for her opponents, given how she often has traveled in the jet stream of Ireland’s far-left fringe, most controversially in a 2018 visit to Syria that featured zero criticism of the dictator then in charge, Bashar al-Assad.

The outcome of Ireland’s presidential election — which the government could schedule at any time between September and early November — will depend on whether Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin decide to field their own candidates.

Martin, the great survivor of Irish politics currently serving his second term as taoiseach, has repeatedly dismissed any ambitions of “retiring” into the presidential role.

Under the terms of his party’s coalition deal with its traditional rivals Fine Gael, Martin can remain government leader until late 2027, when he must give way to Simon Harris, the Fine Gael leader and current minister for foreign affairs and trade. Most expect the 64-year-old Martin, party chief since 2011 and a Cork lawmaker since 1989, to pass the Fianna Fáil reins to a successor by then.

Yet Martin also has devoted much of his energy over the past decade to thwarting the rise of Sinn Féin, whose own leader McDonald has fallen short of power in the last two general elections and faces a political crossroads. Some analysts think if McDonald runs, Martin could be tempted too.

Both Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin are canvassing members internally, seeking a consensus on whether they should run candidates and, if so, whom. A verdict from both camps is expected within weeks.

The most vocal would-be presidential candidate, former mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor, may be U.S. President Donald Trump’s favorite — but the anti-immigrant blowhard almost certainly won’t be on the ballot.

That’s because Ireland’s presidential election rules require eligible candidates to demonstrate backing from at least 20 members of the country’s parliament or at least four of Ireland’s 31 councils. McGregor hasn’t achieved any such backing, and the system doesn’t accommodate write-in candidates.