The President, Mrs McAleese, has used her current Australian visit to speak about her first year in office and discuss the possibility of Australia becoming a republic.
At a breakfast with Irish journalists during her 11-day state visit, she dismissed "personal commentaries" about her and reports on the way she dressed.
Referring to her predecessor, Mrs Mary Robinson, she said there was no competition between presidents, only the competition to become one.
The President said it was only natural there would be an initial period of comparison as the public was weaned off a person they were used to and presented with almost a stranger.
"If people wanted an exact replica of the president who went before I think we should definitely wait for cloning to come and then we wouldn't have any problems and we wouldn't have any elections."
She said the high points of her year were the visit to Lebanon to honour UN peacekeeping forces and the Belfast Agreement which she believed would deliver the final stage in a new golden age for Ireland. The President said she was involved in many other projects, such as those with schoolchildren and bringing members of the Orange Order south, which weren't yet well understood in Ireland. The current general election in Australia had not affected her visit, she said, and she claimed it had "added spice" to the tour.
She wouldn't be drawn into Australia's debate between a republic and the monarchy but said it was a fascinating issue. She also said Australians had told her they feared that if they went for a republic it would be the end of all things British.
She believed such changes did not have to obliterate everything that went before or be an either/or process, as histories could live together. "One of the big lessons of the Good Friday agreement is that you can live with parallel tracks and if you want a happy, contented people, you have to live with parallel tracks," she said.
"If you keep looking for a situation in which one side wins and one side loses, you just keep replicating the conflict."