President expresses surprise at scale of reaction to comments on foreign policy

President Michael D Higgins has expressed surprise over the scale of reaction to his comments on last month’s Consultative Forum on International Security Policy, and said his desire is to see the broadest possible debate on all major matters of public policy.

The President was widely criticised after a newspaper interview about the State’s foreign policy, in which he suggested Ireland was “playing with fire” during what he described as a period of “drift”.

Addressing delegates on Tuesday at the Irish Congress of Trade Unions biennial conference in Kilkenny, he said: “If we are going to build peace, co-operation, new forms of trade, different forms of banking, it [the process involved] belongs to all of the people.

“I’m glad the discussion was wide. Good luck to it and all it does. I think in relation to foreign policy, it will be at its best and strongest if the discourse is most inclusive. Breadth is good. Narrowness is dangerous,” he said.

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The President had also been criticised for his reference to forum moderator Prof Louise Richardson‘s “very large DBE” in the interview. In a statement, Áras an Uachtaráin subsequently said the President’s exact words were “a very large-letter DBE”. On Tuesday, he again said it had merely been an observation with regard to the larger print in which the honour was listed on the forum agenda, but said she had “graciously” accepted his apology with regard to it.

He said his desire is for greater transparency with the public, an issue he raised in his speech to conference delegates in relation to the European Central Bank and the thinking behind its current decision-making on interest rates.

“Is it not of value that the European Central Bank would publish the papers on inflation, and the analysis it is drawing on to arrive at decisions in relation to threatening future increases?” he said.

“What this is all about is what the public are entitled to hear. What is wrong with having to say, ‘We have five or six options but we were impressed by this argument’, and so forth?”

He suggested his criticism was intended to be of all major decision-making organisations that do not engage properly with citizens.

“I think we are in a very bad position in relation to the communication of policy. I think the United Nations has a real problem with it. I could give you a list of issues, of meetings taking place at different levels of the European Union, and I really don’t know what the source of the decision is, what the options were, how any options were chosen and so forth. And that’s bad.”

People, he said, have a right to be informed and are more informed when there was a free and open flow of information.

“The Irish population are better informed on Palestine, because we have our soldiers going there and they come home and they talk to the schools and everything about it,” the President said.

“And I have to say, I hope we don’t have to wait all day to hear a statement from the European Union on what is happening in Jenin – people killed, dozens of people injured in a refugee camp where there’s a complete imbalance between the two forces.”

At least nine Palestinians were killed and scores wounded on Monday during Israel’s biggest military operation in the West Bank city of Jenin in more than two decades.