Michael D Higgins was a 45-year-old Labour senator when he took the floor in 1986 and spoke of a “tension” between the “secret” nature of Irish diplomacy and a “foreign policy which responds to the moral temper of the people”.
He complained of being unable to find out why Ireland had voted this or that way at the United Nations, and of pressure to moderate positions that were “critical of some of the major investors in this country”. He contrasted the “criteria of pragmatism” in foreign affairs with the “idealism” of the public.
That Seanad debate on December 10th of that year was to lodge in his mind for decades.
He mentioned it to reporters in 2023, and in speeches to diplomats as President in 2015 and in 2021, when he recalled arguments that were made against him that day and the support his proposal had received: “12 votes”.
RM Block
What Higgins had been arguing for was a joint committee of TDs and senators to scrutinise foreign policy. There was broad support for the idea and the Oireachtas would ultimately get one, but without some of what Higgins wanted.
The Labour senator had wanted the committee’s purpose to explicitly be to “reaffirm the principle of the neutrality of Ireland in international affairs”. He wanted it to have investigatory powers: to be able to summon people and request department documents, and to be able to make those documents public.
This “touched nerves within the diplomatic establishment”, he wrote three years after the debate, accusing the group of orchestrating the defeat of his proposal.
The “mandarins of Leinster House” had a “supercilious” view of parliamentarians, he wrote; his opponents believed in “diplomatic elitism”.
This conception of foreign policy and dismissal of the role of civil servants in executing it shaped Higgins’s 14 years in Áras an Uachtaráin, particularly during his second seven-year term from 2018.
It may prove to be one of the most consequential aspects of his presidency, as it has shaped the campaign to elect his successor, and the public expectations of how the next president will fulfil the role.
Non-political, non-partisan
In 1995, the government of the day set up a panel of civil society members, predominantly lawyers, to examine whether Bunreacht na hÉireann, the Constitution of Ireland, needed to be updated. Presided over by the influential civil servant TK Whitaker, the panel was to examine, among other issues, whether all speeches by the president required formal government approval, or only formal addresses.
This isn’t explicitly set out in the Constitution, which was written before the spread of cameras, microphones and social media. It states that apart from a few specific discretionary powers such as the ability to refer legislation to the Supreme Court to check its constitutionality, all the president’s functions, including addresses to the nation or the Oireachtas, can only be done “on the advice of the Government”.
In its report, the panel found that it was so evident “from the beginning” of the establishment of the office of president that this was a role “above politics” that there was no need to add any clarification about speech into the Constitution.
The Constitution sets out a “non-political, non-partisan” presidency “impeccably remote from party politics”, the panel said. The president should abstain “from any public statement or intervention which could be judged to be politically partisan or inconsistent with the fundamental principle that there can be only one executive authority”, it wrote.
The Irish presidency is an internationally unusual combination, directly elected but with few powers. Its non-party-political nature was part of the reassurance given to opponents who, in the mistrustful post-Civil War atmosphere in which the role was created, feared a figure with dictatorial powers.
The president “should not be involved in what you might call party politics or in matters where there are differences of party view,” the Constitution’s architect, Éamon de Valera, told the Dáil in debates about the document in 1937. The president should only “interfere” if there was a “clear and an obvious abuse of power”.
The first president, Gaelic League founder and professor Douglas Hyde, was the embodiment of this conception of the role and his five Fianna Fáil-backed successors largely followed suit.
The break came with Mary Robinson, the Labour Party nominee of 1990. She made a variety of public comments that were seen as controversial, and both met the Dalai Lama and shook the hand of Gerry Adams, then Sinn Féin leader, in 1993, despite government objections. Yet the efforts of the then taoiseach, Charles Haughey, to restrain her were deemed to have landed badly with the public, and later governments took note.
In response to questions for this article, a spokesman for President Michael D Higgins noted that in his second election in 2018 he received “the highest number of votes in Irish presidential election history” and continued to enjoy “very strong approval ratings” in polls.
“There is no profit in taking on the most popular politician in the country,” a senior official put it.
The boundaries of the office
As a young man, Higgins was given the task by his family of persuading his dying father to go into St Joseph’s, a former Co Clare workhouse.
He was to be “condemned to remember your eyes / as they met mine in that moment / before they wheeled you away”, he wrote in a poem in 1990.
It contains bitter details about the social conditions surrounding the death of his father, who had fought on the anti-Treaty side in the Civil War and struggled to get jobs and a pension as a result.
“It was 1964, just after optical benefit / was rejected by de Valera for poorer classes / in his Republic, who could not afford, / as he did, / to travel to Zurich / for their regular tests and their / rimless glasses,” he wrote. The poem is called The Betrayal.
Years later, Higgins recalled his father’s death again. “He and the fellow republicans he had met in hospital had been betrayed by those who had stolen the dream of a free and independent Ireland,” he wrote.
That story of Ireland – betrayal and the broken promises of the revolution – was to become a running theme of Higgins’s first term in office from 2011 to 2018.
He came to power with the State at an economic low point, struggling with soaring unemployment and emigration, with the government part way through a years-long programme of punishing austerity budgets under international supervision.
He ran on a platform of promoting the arts, strengthening links with the diaspora and improving Ireland’s “international reputation”, increasing democratic participation and championing “inclusion”.
We must “rekindle the unfulfilled promises bequeathed to us across the century”, he told a crowd at speech at Liberty Hall in Dublin to commemorate the 1913 Lockout.
It was the start of the decade of centenaries, and Higgins was to apply his full arsenal of talents to the moment: personal experience, scholarly heft, the knack of a stonking speech.
The same framing of righting historical wrongs was echoed by the 2015 campaign to legalise same-sex marriage whose supporters would frequently say that, a century on, it was now time to honour the Proclamation’s promise of “cherishing all the children of the nation equally”.
The election of Higgins, who had supported gay rights, divorce and contraception long before these were easy positions to hold, was arguably an early tell of the way in which Irish society had already changed.
One of the first times he drew criticism for overstepping the bounds of his office was when, at a time when the government opposed an inquiry, he called for an investigation into the death of Savita Halappanavar that “satisfies the genuine concern of the Irish people”.
Halappanavar’s death from sepsis after she was refused a termination in hospital during a prolonged miscarriage – a foetal heartbeat could still be detected – would galvanise the campaign that would ultimately repeal the restrictive Eighth Amendment and legalise abortion.
“I remember texting him and saying: well done ... nobody else is saying it,” recalled Mary Van Lieshout, a former adviser to the President.
“I do think the political class at that stage was just so defensive. They were defensive and quiet, and worried and cautious.”
“That was one of his first ways in which he spoke to the beating heart, if I could put it that way,” she continued.
“I think Michael D picked up on the public disquiet – parts of the psyche that other people were afraid to speak about in the political classes, but was growing on the ground.”
Higgins would be particularly successful in his cultural initiatives, helped by the personal relationships with prominent people he brought into the office.
“He’s close to all the main literary figures,” one staff member recalled. “Bono would drop in for lunch.”
Having already had several collections of his poetry published, in September he released an album of autobiographical poetry and conversation set to music with the sought-after musician and film-maker Myles O’Reilly.
Along the way, Higgins attained pop culture status, aided by his striking visual image: diminutive, a professorial shock of white hair behind each ear, frequently pictured with a presidential dog or two rivalling him in size.
Just as one can buy merchandise affectionately featuring the royal family in the UK, the Irish public was offered Michael D children’s books, mugs, coasters, lapel pins, Christmas Cards, framed prints, and matching Michael D and Sabina knitted tea cosies.
Enjoying high levels of popularity, Higgins changed his mind on his 2011 campaign pledge to only serve a single term. He had come to embody the zeitgeist of Ireland’s liberal moment.
Somewhat in contrast to his cuddly public image, those working closely with Higgins saw a more prickly side.
“Not the most easy to deal with,” said one. He could be “stubborn” or “obstinate” about daily schedules.
“No hesitation calling you at night, if he has any issue or any concern,” a former staff member recalled.
He’s not one to forgive and forget. “Slights, and perceived slights, are never forgotten,” one source said.
[ Is President Michael D Higgins really ‘beyond criticism’?Opens in new window ]
“The President can remember things that foreign affairs officials said to him in the mid-1980s,” they continued. “That extraordinary mind that has such great capacity, some of it is used to store things, bad things that people said about him.”
Adapting to the Áras, with its staff of protocol officers and requirements to co-ordinate with the Irish state bureaucracy on overseas trips, was not always easy for the independent-minded politician.
In the early years, some staff found working with the President difficult, and there was frequent turnover. Particularly wounding for some were the dressing-downs he could deliver in front of others when displeased, which could be humiliating.
“He was untrusting of the Civil Service as a body. I often asked myself, where did it come from? Was it his background? Was it that he saw them as authority?” one source recalled.
“It was almost ingrained in him, that mistrust of the Civil Service. That did lead, in some cases, to unnecessary tensions.”
Negative coverage
Some of the most difficult moments could be when Higgins would see a negative detail about him in media coverage.
Higgins reads the Irish newspapers daily and scrutinises articles about himself, ready to demand changes, even while away on far-flung overseas trips. He can become “outraged”, one person who has worked with him said.
“It’s like any high-performing artist or star; it doesn’t matter how many great reviews you get,” they said.
“It doesn’t matter what nice things are said in the editorial in The Irish Times if there is a letter of criticism in the Sligo Weekender. It sends them off the deep end. It’s scarcely believable, but it’s mixed up in this whole sense of a political ego.”
For some, it’s merely that he takes his job extremely seriously.
“People say: Oh, he’s being sensitive. I don’t think that’s the correct representation. This is not about Michael D Higgins; this is about the presidency of Ireland,” a person who worked with him said.
Higgins is widely credited as being extremely hardworking, still at his desk late into the night and able to keep up a physical endurance on engagements as younger people faltered.
Many in the Áras speak of him as quick witted and good company over a cup of tea – he doesn’t drink alcohol – a keen follower of Galway United who was always ready to break the ice with chat about sports.
David Keaney, a Donegal native who did a nine-month student-catering internship at Áras an Uachtaráin in 2023, recalled the President warmly.
“He would always be asking how my family is and wanted to hear about my future,” he said, remembering the President’s “encouraging advice” and gift of a book of his poetry before he left.
Rattling cages
Behind some doors in Leinster House, Higgins was somewhat less beloved.
The State had yet to exit its bailout programme and anti-austerity protests were a regular feature on the streets when, in a 2013 speech to the European Parliament, Higgins criticised an economic model that “demands an unaccountable fiscal compliance, irrespective of the social consequences” and the imposition of “technocratic measures at the expense of democratic accountability”.
[ President Michael D Higgins spoke truth to the powerless as well as the powerfulOpens in new window ]
It was a critique of capitalism in its current form, a theme the President would return to throughout his 14 years in office.
In an interview with the Financial Times shortly afterwards, he weighed in on the then-contentious debate about whether the European Union should respond to its economic crisis by issuing jointly backed Eurobonds, and on the role of the European Central Bank.
“I know that was difficult for the government of the time,” one person close to the situation recalled.
But the President had cover. Labour was in government. Despite the rumblings of disquiet, Higgins was defended on both occasions by Eamon Gilmore, who was then Labour leader and tánaiste in a coalition government with Fine Gael.
“For the first half of his first term, he had somebody watching his back, so it wasn’t as difficult for him as it could – or should – have been,” the source recalled.
Crafting speeches
The process of preparing a presidential speech typically begins with the relevant government department or local Irish embassy abroad preparing a suggested template of talking points. For a speech in the US, these might mention the contribution of Irish immigrants and the importance of US investment in Ireland; for a European country, it might recall the importance of the EU and how the State has thrived economically within it.
In contrast to previous presidents, under Higgins very little of this material survived the vigorous rewrites by the Áras. “Yeah, we never really used that,” recalled Aziliz Gouez, a former speech writer to Higgins now working in local French politics.
A poor sleeper sometimes seen reading through the night, Higgins can get through “dozens of books a week” in preparation for a major speech.
The speechwriting process would begin with a conversation in his book-lined study, and Gouez would then fashion these notes into an initial draft for Higgins to review.
Not one to use a computer, the President would do all his work by hand. His long-time personal assistant Helen Carney would at times need to be called in to interpret his “lovely old-fashioned handwriting”, with the Irish-language paragraphs written in traditional cló Gaelach script.
“There’s many facets to the man. He’s not just a scholar or professor; he wrote for Hot Press for many years. There’s a punk in him as well,” Gouez recalled.
“There were a few instances where he went off script and, you know, played with boundaries.”
Diplomats could be nervous around his speaking events. Some of his material could well have “gone down badly” with local business interests or political factions, one recalled. “This used to worry me.”
Overall, however, diplomats remember Higgins as a talented representative of Ireland to the world, if at times a maverick one.
In 2018, Higgins was on his way to give a speech at Columbia University in New York when a dilemma struck. He discovered that graduate students were on strike outside the building, demanding the right to form a union. He refused to cross the picket.
An elegant resolution was found: he would deliver the speech if he met the students first.
Strikers were amazed to behold the President of Ireland and his wife Sabina appearing to meet them on the picket line.
“Mostly what I remember is the sense that he understood,” recalled a member of the strikers’ bargaining committee, now unwilling to be named due to the intense political scrutiny of academic staff in the US.
After expressing his support, Higgins headed inside the building, and a few minutes into his speech, began delivering lines that were not in his pre-prepared text.
“I would urge the university there is a right to join a trade union,” the President said, noting his meeting with the students.
“I do hope, vice-president, that you will be able to sit down and resolve this issue in a way that respects both their general human and federal state rights.”
A year later, Higgins managed to bond with someone from the other end of the US political spectrum.
The then-vice president Mike Pence, who is famously socially conservative, visited Áras an Uachtaráin in the autumn of 2019. Fearing a clash of minds, US officials had insisted there be no one-on-one meeting between the two.
Then Higgins welcomed Pence into his study, and shut the door behind him.
“The Americans couldn’t get in, and there was this standoff, almost,” an observer recalled. With officials in a flap, the two men remained inside, talking together for roughly half an hour.
“In the end it calmed down, and when Pence came out, everything seemed to have gone swimmingly in there,” the observer remembered.
“The Americans were seething about it.”
It wasn’t to be the last time Higgins ruffled feathers.
He has been criticised for repeatedly wading into matters that are clearly government policy, whether regarding levels of pay for the Defence Forces, or on the housing crisis.
In 2016 he drew controversy for issuing a statement on the death of Fidel Castro that described him as “a giant among global leaders”. Human Rights Watch remembered Castro rather differently, as the author of “a repressive system that punished virtually all forms of dissent”.
Rowing in on international matters
Higgins’s re-election campaign in 2018 was more explicit about his intention to speak out on international matters, stating that it was important for Ireland to “use its voice in the world to promote peace, dialogue, sustainable development, human rights and an end to global poverty”.
Some regret what Higgins hasn’t said, more than what he has. The Government has often hoped for warmer words from him about the European Union. Historically, Higgins held a critical view of the project; he campaigned against joining its antecedent, the European Economic Community, in 1972.
Towards the east of Europe, diplomats wanted stauncher support for Ukraine.
The President condemned Russia’s invasion at its outset, saying Moscow was “operating with total disregard for the principles of international law”, criticising the “immoral and unjustified violence” and calling on Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine.
Kyiv has asked the rest of Europe to go further, and to expressly support its aim of outright victory. Many countries, particularly those closest to Russia’s borders, believe this to be the only way to stop Vladimir Putin seeking to gain more territory by force in the future.
Higgins has long backed a negotiated solution. “Every glimmer of hope through diplomacy must be seized,” he said on the outbreak of war in 2022.
He was asked the following year whether he saw Russia as a colonial power, in the context of its invasion of Ukraine. The President did not answer directly, instead straying into remarks about the positive things that had been lost with the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The following year he questioned the composition of panels and choice of chair of the government’s Consultative Forum on International Security Policy, which was organised to debate the State’s defence policy given the changed situation in Europe. The State was in a dangerous policy “drift”, he warned in a newspaper interview, and could end up no different to “Lithuania and Latvia”, two Nato members. “That’s the fire that people are playing with,” he said.
Facing stiff criticism, Higgins issued an apology for “any offence which he may have inadvertently caused” by his comment about the chair, Prof Louise Richardson, who he had noted was a Dame of the British Empire.
Earlier this year, criticism by Higgins of a Nato call for increased military spending received pushback from a former president of Estonia, a country of 1.4 million people on Russia’s border.
“Do these people have any sense of self-awareness, their privileged geography or the appropriateness of even commenting as the beneficiary of implicit Nato security?” Toomas Hendrik Ilves wrote on social media.
The Irish self-image of neutrality and low defence spending as a moral position is not universally shared. “Some might say that the moral thing is to take on the responsibility of defending Europe,” one French official recently snapped.
The contribution of Sabina Higgins
As his second term progressed, Higgins was seen by the government as becoming increasingly emboldened and unrestrained in sharing his opinions. Some point to the length of the presidential terms as a culprit.
“It’s a lonely role, being in the Áras for 14 years,” one close observer remarked.
“Imagine what’s that like, if you’re living in a big house, isolated, and every time you talk about the issues that you have been passionate about for the last 50 years, everyone nods and says: ‘Yes, yes.’ That does give you a sense of empowerment.”
Higgins was not alone in reshaping the mould of his role.
From the outset, Sabina Higgins felt she had a contribution to make.
“Michelle Obama did something around gardening and nutrition in the White House gardens,” Van Lieshout, the former adviser, recalled.
“I think Sabina would have felt, and I wouldn’t have disagreed, maybe she could carve out a role like that, to pick up on an issue like Michelle was picking up on child nutrition. How could you criticise that?”
Sabina was given a dedicated page on the President’s website to publish her events and speeches. She had a busy schedule of cultural events and promoted breastfeeding with “latching on” events at the Áras.
Those who know the couple say that Sabina has been a close political partner to her husband ever since the two met at a Dublin party in 1974 when he was an early-career politician and she was an actor with a passion for politics.
“She was always a very important part of his political career,” a close observer said.
“She would have been a very, very important player in the overall expression of the presidency.”
“He certainly is influenced by her opinion. They share a political history together,” Van Lieshout said.
“They have deep-seated shared views about society, about art, about politics – he certainly would discuss things with her and be informed by her view, and she had a contribution to make.”
One of her public contributions was a letter to The Irish Times. Her letter called for ceasefire talks, and praised a prior opinion piece that suggested Ukraine should give up some of its territory for a peace deal.
The text of the letter was published on the President’s website for a short period, before questions were asked and it was hastily taken down. Her arguments were complimented by the Russian ambassador.
The issue remains a sensitive topic for the Áras.
“Staff were uncomfortable about that,” one former official said of the decision to publish the letter.
[ The Irish Times view on the Sabina Higgins letterOpens in new window ]
“It raised this issue: is the wife of the President there in an official capacity? Can she do stuff on a personal basis? And if she’s doing it on a personal basis, should it be on the website?”
She addressed matters of foreign affairs again in a speech last year to a fundraiser for the charity Médecins Sans Frontières in Gaza, in which she spoke of “terrible war crimes”, “Israeli colonial expansion” and said that the Israeli government’s destruction of centres of learning and culture is one of the grounds highlighted in the “genocide case ... against Israel”.
It was far from a speech about gardening and nutrition. But these are uncontroversial views in Ireland, however contested they may be elsewhere, and the speech did not draw much comment.
A vocal presidency
When The Irish Times asked about instances when Higgins drew controversy in his public pronouncements, the response from Áras an Uachtaráin was to recommend reading a recent academic paper.
Published in the Dublin University Law Journal late last year, “Does the Irish Constitution Forbid a Vocal Presidency?” describes the “silent presidency” as a “convention” that was not legally codified.
[ Presidential election: A short history of controversies and kerfufflesOpens in new window ]
The convention now no longer exists, the paper argues, because Mary Robinson first challenged it and now Higgins has “arguably delivered a knock-out blow”.
“Presidents since 1990 no longer behave strictly in accordance with the convention of silence, nor do they apparently believe that they are bound to obey it,” the authors, Seán Rainford and Jamie McLoughlin, write.
The precedent that Higgins has set has arguably been evident in the current election campaign, in which many prospective candidates have stood on policy-led platforms such as housing or immigration.
The issues of neutrality and defence have been prominent in debates.
One of the issues that tripped up the Fianna Fáil candidate Jim Gavin before he ended his campaign was about who should be involved in peace negotiations about Gaza: the Palestinian Authority or Hamas.
A president who speaks their mind on everything without necessarily having any regard to the government position is a risky precedent
— Former diplomat
The website of Fine Gael candidate Heather Humphreys has a traditional description of the president’s overseas role, as a representative of Ireland who would work to “open doors for Irish businesses”.
In contrast, the campaign website of the joint left-wing candidate Catherine Connolly states that she wants “to be a president who speaks for peace, not just abroad, but at home” and vows to “defend” neutrality “with clarity and conviction”.
When pressed about whether he was straying into matters reserved for the government in his foreign policy pronouncements in 2023, Higgins said he had an electoral mandate and the right experience.
“I think I’m reflecting the will of the people who put me in Áras an Uachtaráin,” he told reporters.
There are many people in politics who have strong convictions and believe that they channel the will of the people, critics note, not all of them as able as Michael D Higgins.
“A president who speaks their mind on everything without necessarily having any regard to the government position is a risky precedent,” one former senior diplomat said.
“Not for what Michael D ever said, but for other presidents that might eventually be there.”
Could a conservative Catholic president refuse to sign legislation extending abortion access into law? What about a president who made discriminatory remarks about foreigners in Ireland?
“Many of the people who are happy to see the current president going off script would regard that as very damaging,” the former diplomat remarked.
“I do think that his presidency has given encouragement to people who think that the role of the presidency ought to be to confront the government – and that it should be an alternative source of power – which it cannot be,” the diplomat said.
“An alternative source of power means that there would be a conflict between the branches of government, and ultimately a constitutional crisis.”
Speaking to reporters about the issue in 2023, Higgins once again thought back to that long-ago debate in the Seanad.
“When I proposed a foreign affairs committee, it was voted down,” he recalled, before scornfully imagining someone directed by civil servants, who “simply takes pieces of paper put in front of him or her at the behest of somebody who was part of a department”.
“Foreign policy belongs to us all,” said Higgins.
With a chuckle, he thought forward to the end of his term, which he is now approaching at the age of 84.
“You know, in a couple of years’ time people will be able to resolve this issue themselves, in relation to whether they want a silent person, a puppet, or whether they want a president.”
