Heather Humphreys says the first visitor she will invite to Áras an Uachtaráin if she is elected president will be Michael D Higgins because “he is a very learned and very wise man and I really think that he could certainly give me some very good advice”. What a very odd thing for her to say. If the Fine Gael candidate believes her own campaign’s scare-theory that Catherine Connolly is unfit to be president because she criticises the EU, it must follow by the same rationale that Higgins should never have been allowed to set foot inside the Áras. For Ireland’s outgoing president has been one of the loudest EU-critical voices on the national and international stage.
Upbraiding the EU has been a regular theme of the Higgins presidency, yet nobody in Government would dare accuse him of being an enemy of the bloc. In 2013, he rebuked EU leaders for lumping citizens with banking debts and austerity measures.
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