Michael D Higgins insists he is President of Ireland, refuses to commemorate partition

R.odders999

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903758#Comment_117903758

Don't mention occupying, touchy subject.

Brucie Bonus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903476#Comment_117903476

I think the Fine Gael lads are worried it might affect their KBE prospects.

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117902617#Comment_117902617

he is the president of Ireland, you should read up on the Republic of Ireland Act

Brucie Bonus

Is the queen going so she can apologise? It was hardly a resounding success. I'd say Fine Gael and the other unionists had to lobby hard to get the queen to go. I'd say Andrew is afraid to leave the house incase he gets extradited.

Higgins is brilliant. He is completely right not to attend.

Sunny Disposition

Serious question. Who organised this ceremony? The churches, the UK State, the DUP, who?

Kermit.de.frog

Islam?

Dunno

topmanamillion

Fair play to President Higgins here.

He was prepared to go when it was dubbed as a service and reconciliation event but no way should the head of state be going to an event celebrating partition. That would simply be a kick in the teeth for a majority of people in Northern Ireland.

The DUP knew exactly what they were doing when they called him the President of the Republic of Ireland. I`m sure they wouldn`t announce "Queen Lizzy of Britain and less than 1/5th of Ireland" - no they`d be sure to give her, her full title even though she`s done nothing more than being born into the right house.

As for John Bruton..................the mans a laughing stock. There`s absolutely zero appetite here to join the common wealth.

castletownman

Good on Michael D for standing by his beliefs. I can think of a few sniffley West Brits that are allegedly our leaders that would have been straight up the M1 two minutes after opening the invite.

Of course, it's fine and dandy to criticise the DUP for their homophobic stuff. When our president is slighted by them, however, and this is a political stunt, for some reason, the DUP's aren't the bad guys. Madness.

PeaSea

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903806#Comment_117903806

That is literally exactly what I said in the bit you quoted - "He is the president of Ireland".

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903867#Comment_117903867

The DUP. They organised a celebration of partition in a protestant church. A large part of their reasoning was the hope that prominent Irish politicians would refuse to go and they'd get to moan about how the Republicans are not interested in unity.

They probably didn't foresee at the time though that the DUP itself would be in the middle of threatening to pull out of Stormont and trying to bring a hard border on the island.

JP Liz V1

Stand your ground Higgy

Ash.J.Williams

Is it just me or are we seeing a lot of valid threads with stupid titles lately? Are they teaching click bait in school or wha

ted1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903907#Comment_117903907

no, you said President of Ireland is the short title giving to the "Republic of Ireland" the official title is Éire  or Ireland.

topmanamillion

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903922#Comment_117903922

Thankfully voters in the North are starting to wake up to the DUP. They`re the 3rd placed unionist party now with Sinn Fein having double their vote in most poll. They`re just a failing party with failed policies. If they bring down Stormont and there`s an election they`ll be wiped out.

PeaSea

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903922#Comment_117903922

According to most reports including RTE, the service is being organised by the "main Christian churches" and not the DUP.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903021#Comment_117903021

Build unity by acknowledging our division............... or are we too small minded still to do that?

facehugger99

If Higgins was serious about unification he'd trot up there and apogise to the unionist community for the IRA atrocities and assure them of their place in a United Ireland.

Instead he decided to play to the galley of barstool republicans' in a fit of pique - we should expect no better of him I suppose.

The clappy seals that support Higgins are too dumb to realise they are setting back the prospects of a UI by decades - still, I don't fancy forking out an extra €20bn a year, so that's ok I guess.

PeaSea

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903952#Comment_117903952

And in that I was wrong and glad to be corrected - I thought Rep of Ireland was the official name and Ireland the common name rather than the other way round.

You'll understand that where I come from, this distinction was not often made obvious.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117903236#Comment_117903236

That's exactly and precisely what our President is, in plain English.

McMurphy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904023#Comment_117904023

Why the fook would the president of Ireland apologise for IRA atrocities?

Was Mickey D a member of the RA? Would you expect the queen of England to apologise to us for the actions of the loyalist paramilitary forces???

The fcukin state of your post. 🤣

melekalikimaka

the issue here is, unless you are up to speed with our constitution the correct title can be perceived as misleading

Cilldara_2000

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904023#Comment_117904023

Any Irish politician or NI nationalist politician could bend over backwards for unity. It will never make an ounce of difference to the DUP and their "we're British and nothing else" fellow travellers. Hence why every time anyone talks about border polls or building a "shared island" they always say they're not interested. Partitionists know this when they set this impossibly high bar for republicans and nationalists.

The only way they'll ever be shown different is when we vote in a united Ireland on a 50% +1 basis as set out in the GFA and then subsequently treat everyone equally and with dignity - IE do the opposite of what they did in their plastic "Protestant State for a Protestant people".

Dead right he shouldn't accept the invitation. It would be fairly ironic if the President of Ireland attended an event which celebrated partition. DUP are not very smart when it comes to diplomacy.

Queen Elizabeth will not attend the event anyway. Some lower royal might attend on her behalf.

Furze99

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904099#Comment_117904099

That's delusional - how do you think the Protestant people who lived down south were treated after the foundation of the Free State and later Republic. Like sh*te in case you don't know the answer. This 50+1% idea is mad and would lead to open hostility. We need to be aiming for at least 80% in favour on both sides of the border. Get working on it. And our president could do with showing a good example.

seamus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904059#Comment_117904059

Sure, if you're just some Joe Nobody.

There's no excuse for an Irish politician to not know the difference and understand the context. It was of course a deliberate misnomer by whoever sent the invitation.

hawley

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904023#Comment_117904023

It's a dog whistle to a lot of the younger generation who never seem to tire of letting people know how anti-British they are. They are revelling in their own bigotry today. His behavior isn't far removed from that of Trump's presidency; taking offence to how they worded his title and sowing more division, instead of reconciliation.

PeaSea

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904099#Comment_117904099

"It will never make an ounce of difference to the DUP and their "we're British and nothing else" fellow travellers".

You're quite right. Though it will make a difference to moderate unionists like me who have been brought up to believe British is best but suddenly find that we're closer to the ideologies and people of Ireland rather than Britain. We're not all DUP followers you know. The current UK government is the most corrupt and obnoxious that I have seen in my 50+ years and the DUP have been shown to be their bosom pals. There is an opportunity here to convince others of my breed that Ireland is our better path. To do that you need to convice that we are wanted and will not be mistreated. I personally believe Higgins attendance would have furthered that. But as I said before, the guy is entitled to his own choice.

FunLover18

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904198#Comment_117904198

They could have just got his title right, it's not hard.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117904198#Comment_117904198

This is like saying Ukraine would be rude down the line for not joining Russia in celebrating the annexing of Crimea.

If there was any genuine attempt at reconciliation, the DUP's position for the last five years wouldn't have been attempting to return to a hard border.

ireallydontknow

The response to this on Reddit Ireland and Journal.ie shows you just how latent is poisonous Anglophobia in this country.

Higgins's umbrage at President of the Republic is not baseless, but it is contentious. The Republic of Ireland Act allows for Ireland to be referred to as ROI abroad. As regrettable as it may be for some, NI is abroad. So at least in a descriptive sense, President of the Republic is justified. But it's true that it's not his formal title. Yet, the name Ireland, for the political entity that only encompasses part of the geographical region of the same name, was and remains a provocative choice. In such situations as this, sense might be expected to prevail and allow an accommodation for the fact that many people in NI resent that the Irish State, and thereby our president, claims to speak for them.

Regardless, such breaches of protocol get handled behind close doors. It's scarcely believable that he would petulantly use it as explanation for his refusal.