Letter from Sabina Coyne Higgins ending up on President's website a 'worry'
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It is a “worry” that a letter from Sabina Coyne Higgins, wife of Michael D Higgins, to a newspaper ended up on the official website of the President, a junior minister has said.
Junior Finance Minister Robert Troy said the process for how the letter was published on the Áras website should be explained. However, he accepted the letter had been written with “good intentions”.
Ms Coyne Higgins wrote to last week to call for a negotiated settlement to the war. She said the paper's editorial pages had not mentioned any move towards a ceasefire.
In the letter, she said the fighting would go on until the world "persuades President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations".
Critics have suggested Ms Coyne Higgins was drawing an equivalence between the actions of Ukraine and Russia.
There has been growing pressure on the president to make a full statement clarifying the letter written by his wife, which briefly appeared on the official presidential website before being taken down.
However, there was some criticism for Ms Coyne Higgins because her letter was praised by Yury Filatov, the Russian ambassador to Ireland. He told the call for a negotiated settlement "makes sense”.
Mr Troy told RTÉ radio that the praise of Mr Filatov was “a worry”, as was the publishing of the letter on the President’s website and its subsequent deletion.
Meanwhile, a Fianna Fáil senator has called on the President to “consider his position” over the publishing of the letter.
Erin McGreehan tweeted that Mr Higgins has “disrespected our nation & the Office of the Presidency when he published his wife’s letter. At least he needs to apologise and if he doesn’t he should most definitely consider his position.”
Earlier, former transport minister Shane Ross defended the right of Ms Coyne Higgins to express her opinion and said demands for the president to defend his wife’s position were “ridiculous”.
While he did not agree with Ms Coyne Higgins’ comments on the war in Ukraine in a controversial letter, she was entitled to her opinions and should not have to be defended by the president, Mr Ross said.
Mr Ross told Newstalk he did not agree with the content of the letter and it was necessary to state “absolutely, categorically” that Ireland was on the side of Ukraine.
But Ms Coyne Higgins' right to express her opinion was a different matter. Ms Coyne Higgins had “a very, very fine record” as an anti-war activist, he said.
“The idea that the president should now come in and defend his wife's position is to me somewhat ridiculous. She's entitled to, and does, express her opinion on these views, and if they happen to differ from his, and I don't know whether they do or not, I don't think every time they do differ he's going to come in and say 'I do differ on this, that and the other'.”
However, Mr Ross added that the letter should not have appeared on the president's official website, which he said had been a mistake. It had been withdrawn, which had to be acknowledged, but it should never have been put there in the first place.
“But her right to say this is very important. We're confusing two issues here — one is it shouldn't have gone on the website, that was wrong. But the second is to say that he's responsible for — the implication here — for what she says, and that she's some sort of robot the moment he becomes elected for the presidency is wrong as well.”