If Michael D Higgins is still president when US president Donald Trump pays a courtesy call in mid-November, it will represent a very different occasion to previous visits by controversial Republican US presidents.
Mr Higgins, then a senator, was one of the leading protesters when Ronald Reagan visited Ireland in 1984. When Air Force One arrived at Shannon airport, the then senator addressed a group of about 500 protesters, decrying Mr Reagan for alleged US collusion with atrocities in El Salvador and the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
Higgins excoriated TDs and senators who were in attendance for Reagan's address to a joint sitting of the Oireachtas
When Mr Reagan was conferred with an honorary doctorate in UCG, now NUI Galway, Mr Higgins led a protest outside. Dressed in full academic robes, he and other lecturers, held a mock “deconferring ceremony”.
Later Labour Party posters were distributed around Dublin with the legend “Kick Reagan Out”. They included Mr Higgins’ signature.
He also excoriated TDs and senators who were in attendance for Mr Reagan’s address to a joint sitting of the Oireachtas, as suffering from political amnesia.
During an official visit to Australia last year, the President criticised “the politics of fear” including anti-immigrant sentiment that led to Brexit and the election of Mr Trump.
He said that “old-fashioned, ignorant, anti-migrant prejudice”, were the underlying factors.
