Former minister for transport Shane Ross has defended the right of Sabina Higgins to express her opinion and said demands for the President to defend his wife’s position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine are “ridiculous”.
Although he did not agree with Ms Higgins’s comments on the war, expressed in a letter to The Irish Times, Mr Ross said she was entitled to her opinions and should not have to be defended by Michael D. Higgins.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast, Mr Ross said it was necessary to state “absolutely, categorically” that Ireland was on the side of Ukraine, but that the right of Mrs Higgins to express her opinion was a different matter. Mr Ross said she had “a very, very fine record” as an anti-war activist.
“The idea that the President should now come in and defend his wife’s position is to me somewhat ridiculous,” he said. “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’.”
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However, Mr Ross said the letter should not have been posted on the official website of the Irish presidency. This, he said, was a mistake and the letter had since been removed.
“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.”
Asked about the matter during an interview on RTÉ radio’s News at One, Minister of State Robert Troy said Mrs Higgins is “a private citizen” and is “entitled to her own opinion”. He said the President had since “come out and clarified his utter condemnation of the Russian invasion”.
“While Ms Higgins obviously wrote the letter, I take it with good intentions, it is a worry that the Russian ambassador welcomed the intervention that she made and it is a worry that the letter ended up on the official website of the Arás. I think it would be helpful if the Arás could clarify how it ended up on their official website,” he said.
Mr Troy said he was aware if there had or had not been any contact by the Government with the Arás about the matter.
“I haven’t spoken about this with my colleagues,” he said.
In her letter, Mrs Higgins criticised an Irish Times editorial published on July 20th, saying she was “disappointed” and “dismayed” that it did not “encourage any ceasefire negotiations that might lead to a positive settlement”.
She said the fighting would go on until the world “persuades President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire and negotiations”.
The concerns raised by critics and some politicians are that she appeared to be drawing an equivalence between the actions of Ukraine and Russia.
A spokesman for Mr Higgins said on Monday the President was “unequivocal in his condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine” and pointed to a number of previous public statements he had made on the topic.
However, some TDs and Senators have called for Mr Higgins to distance himself from the comments or make a statement on the contents of the letter
Fine Gael TD and former government chief whip Paul Kehoe said: “This is very concerning. Diplomats are watching very closely what is being said. I am disappointed the substantive matter was not addressed, including the contents of the correspondence.”
