orig. Mary Bourke
born May 21, 1944, Ballina, County Mayo, Ire.
Irish politician, first woman president of Ireland (1990–97).
She earned a law degree at the University of Dublin, where she became a professor of law (1969–75). She served in the Irish senate (1969–89) as a Labour Party member. Nominated by the Labour Party and supported by the Green Party and the Workers' Party, she became Ireland's first woman president in 1990 by mobilizing a liberal constituency and merging it with a more conservative constituency opposed to the Fianna Fáil party. In 1997 she left office a few months before her term expired to take up the post of UN high commissioner for human rights.