On 29 March 2019, McAleese addressed the Brexit Institute at DCU. She said "The process of Brexit has been like watching a political form of necrotising fasciitis as it has devoured time, effort, good will, patience, reputations, relationships, engendering huge volumes of work, of anxiety and again, no obvious end in sight. We know that it has rendered the word 'meaningful' completely meaningless. She said "I am heart sorry to see the UK go, to leave the EU, things will not be the same. The future experience will not be the one we envisaged. I harboured a hope that somehow, the United Kingdom would step back from the brink and recommit to the ideal of the European Union, in my view the greatest and the noblest political undertaking ever envisaged and realised in human history. That's a description that is unlikely to ever be attached to Brexit."