Today in 1990, Ireland elected first woman president, Mary Robinson.  It was the first time in 70 years that a presidential candidate put up by Fianna Fail, had been defeated.  Mrs Robinson, a Dublin barrister, was considered radical in Irish terms.  A civil and human rights lawyer, she had campaigned for the liberalisation of laws prohibiting divorce and abortion for more than 20 years.  However, she not only won the support of women countrywide but also polled well in traditionally conservative rural areas.  Mary Robinson was a mother of three and had been a member of the Irish Senate for more than 20 years.  She had twice previously run unsuccessfully for parliament as a Labour candidate.  But in 1985, she had resigned from the Irish Labour party over the Anglo-Irish agreement because she felt unionists in Northern Ireland had not been consulted.

Mary Robinson helped transform the role of Irish president from a largely ceremonial position to one of influence.  She resigned a few months before end of her term in 1997 to become the United Nations Commissioner on Human Rights.  Her forthright style and uncompromising criticism of some countries' human rights records angered governments around the world.  She made enemies in the United States after with her outspoken criticism of the detention of al-Qaeda suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

In March 2002 Mrs Robinson announced she would not be seeking a second term in the UN post.  She went on to serve as the twenty-fourth, and first female, Chancellor of the University of Dublin.  She represented the university in the Seanad for over twenty years and held the Reid Chair in Law. She was succeeded as chancellor by Mary McAleese, who had also succeeded her as president of Ireland.  Along with Nelson Mandela, Graça Machel, and Desmond Tutu, and others, Robinson was a founding member of "The Elders", a group of world leaders to with goal of contributing their wisdom to tackle some of the world's toughest problems.  On 1 November 2018, she was appointed Chair of The Elders, succeeding Kofi Annan who had died earlier in the year.