Rita Childers

Rita Childers is a former First Lady of the Republic of Ireland. She is the widow of Erskine Hamilton Childers, the fourth President of Ireland (1973-1974). A former Attache in the British Embassy in Dublin, Rita married Childers, who was then a senior Fianna Fáil politician and government minister, in 1952. It was his second marriage and her first.

The couple's mixed marriage (he was an Anglican, she a Roman Catholic) caused some controversy; the then Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid tried to discourage them from marrying. They eventually opted to marry in Paris. (McQuaid later apologised to the couple for his behaviour.)

Erskine was elected President of Ireland in June 1973. An acclaimed president, the popular Childers died suddenly in November 1974. The political parties secretly agreed a deal to make Rita, who had been acclaimed in her own right for her performance as First Lady, the new president. However a political dispute, in which a minister in the National Coalition government with a hearing defect misheard a journalist's question about Mrs Childers and confirmed that she would be the next president, led the plan to collapse. Her late husband's political party, Fianna Fáil, withdrew its support for her and instead proposed former Chief Justice Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh. Ó Dálaigh was eventually elected unopposed as the joint nominee of the government and main opposition parties. (See Irish presidential election, 1974)

Having left Áras an Uachtaráin (the presidential residence) Rita became an outspoken critic both of her late husband's former colleagues in Fianna Fáil, and of the office of president. Following the resignation of Cearbhall Ó Dálaigh as president in October 1976, Rita called for the office's suspension.

Rita and Erskine's daughter, Nessa, entered politics in 2004 when she was elected as a councillor on Dún Laoghaire county council for the Green Party.

Rita's stepson, Erskine Barton Childers, (her husband's son by his first marriage to Ruth Ellen Dow) served as a senior official in the United Nations.