Gavan Reilly: Michael D knows what he’s doing – and so do his critics

It’s a funny job, the Presidency. It’s the only job in the country where the holder gets elected by the country, yet it’s a job in which the incumbent effectively gets no power at all. Leo Varadkar gets elected by 8,500 people in Dublin West, but the nod of a critical mass of TDs makes him Taoiseach. Michael D Higgins wins 822,000 votes from the four corners of the country, 56 per cent in a six-horse race, but he’s told to keep schtum.

And it’s not like the people elected an enigma when they chose him. Higgins’ stance on global affairs was well ventilated when he was in the Dáil. Indeed, Higgins was famously absent during some Labour tumult of the mid-1980s, as he was off in Nicaragua on an outreach visit during the Contra War. Then-leader Frank Cluskey quipped: “Trust Michael D to take the easy option – saving the world over saving the Labour Party.” No doubt his position on some global issues, including that of Palestine’s cause for statehood, was a small part of the reason he got elected to the Áras twice.

It’s been fascinating watching the debate on Higgins’ public statements play out in the last week: media commentators (hello!) having what looks like a sullen whinge about the President saying things that presidents don’t traditionally say, and ordinary people on social media (hello?) then crying foul at some kind of perceived media agency to put Higgins back in his box.

What is missing from that reaction is a more explicit rationale for why Higgins’ recent comments about the Middle East are apparently objectionable. And certainly, nobody can point to a specific clause in the Constitution that says ‘thou shalt not pronounce opinions on this specific thing’, so the handwringing from the commentariat (hello again!) might seem a bit bewildering.

I think the truth is that people in my line of work tend to think about the Constitution a little more regularly than the fella on the street, and that the invisible dividing lines between the arms of government are a little more sensitive to us. Yes, there’s nothing to stop the President mouthing off about the Middle East – or the Late Late Show, or Galway United getting promoted in the League of Ireland – but in Article 29 there is something that protects foreign relations as the sole preserve of the Government, not the President nor Dáil. But do you think the diplomats of other countries are so well drilled on that constitutional nicety? Almost certainly not.

A President freewheeling to complain about the head of the European Commission, or the conduct of another country, might be largely echoing the same views as the Government – but it’s not up to him to do it. Just like the Attorney General announcing a clampdown on crime, or the Comptroller and Auditor General opining on tax cuts: it might sound like his job, but it’s not, and it’s not a personal vendetta to simply say so.

- Gavan Reilly is Political Correspondent with Virgin Media News and Political Columnist with the Meath Chronicle (Column appears first every Tuesday in the Paper)