Michael Joseph O'Higgins (1 November 1917 – 9 March 2005)[1] was an Irish Fine Gael politician who served as Leader of the Seanad from 1973 to 1977.

The son of prominent Fine Gael politician Thomas F. O'Higgins, Michael and his brother Tom both entered the Dáil in 1948 and served there for a number of decades.

While Tom built a reputation as a liberal, Michael mirrored their father and was considered a conservative.

As a teenager, O'Higgins was a member of the Blueshirts, the radical right-wing paramilitary that emerged in the early 1930s in Ireland in opposition to the Irish Republican Army.

In 1965, when James Dillon stepped down as leader of Fine Gael, O'Higgins moved immediately to nominate Liam Cosgrave as the new leader in order to prevent the left-wing of the party, centring around Declan Costello, any time to organise their own campaign for the position.

[2] During the 1970s O'Higgins opposed any attempts to legalise the sale of contraceptives (birth control) in Ireland.