Ireland’s neutrality debates: President accused of ‘gratuitous attack’ on forum chair

Tánaiste Micheál Martin has defended the Government’s planned neutrality debates and said it would be a “fundamental mistake” to shy away from re-examining Ireland’s defence policy.

Claims by President Michael D Higgins that Ireland is experiencing a dangerous “drift” in foreign policy have caused concern at the highest levels of Government.

Further comments by the President about Louise Richardson, the chair of the forthcoming consultative forum, have also caused controversy, with Fine Gael TD and former minister for foreign affairs Charlie Flanagan accusing Mr Higgins of engaging in an “unnecessary and gratuitous attack” which was “uncalled for”.

The President referred to Prof Richardson as a person “with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”, adding that it was “grand” but “I think that there were a few candidates I could have come up with myself”.

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[ Q+A: Neutrality debates and the President: What is behind Michael D Higgins’s criticism? ]

The Irish academic, who was previously vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, is now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a $4.7 billion philanthropic foundation.

Asked for Prof Richardson’s response to such remarks, the Carnegie Corporation referred questions to the Department of Foreign Affairs. The department provided a statement from Mr Martin which did not address the President’s comments about the chairwoman.

In the interview with the Business Post, conducted ahead of the opening of the series public consultations on Thursday, Mr Higgins said “the crawl away from the self-esteem of our foreign policy bothers me”.

Ireland’s foreign policy was one of “positive neutrality, and it can be defined very simply as Ireland’s right to belong to any group that it chooses in relation to non-militaristic international policy… If you interfere with that, there’s no difference between you and Lithuania and Latvia.”

[ Tánaiste strongly defends neutrality debates following criticism by President ]

Fine Gael Minister of State Neale Richmond said the President had gone “close” to stepping over the line in terms of his authority to make such comments, while Mr Flanagan accused Mr Higgins of trying to “shape Government policy against a background of a strong tradition that presidents don’t challenge Government policy.”

In a statement on Sunday, the Tánaiste said that shying away from debating matters of national security and defence would be “an abrogation of responsibility”.

“Since Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which blatantly violated the UN charter and international law and fundamentally altered the European security environment, every country in Europe has examined and re-examined its foreign, security and defence policies. Ireland is no different.”

The Fianna Fáil leader also said the upcoming consultative forum was not “a binary discussion on neutrality and was never intended to be”.

“The Government have made clear that we do not intend to change Ireland’s policy of military neutrality.”