{"id":70312,"date":"2025-09-17T21:28:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T21:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70312\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T21:28:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T21:28:07","slug":"government-pushes-back-at-michael-d-higgins-comments-on-us-and-israels-un-participation-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/70312\/","title":{"rendered":"Government pushes back at Michael D Higgins comments on US and Israel\u2019s UN participation \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government<\/a> has distanced itself from remarks made earlier this week by President Michael D Higgins<\/a> about Israel<\/a>, saying that his views do not represent Government policy.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the National Ploughing Championships on Tuesday, the President advocated that Israel and countries which supply it with armaments, including the US and the UK, should be excluded from the United Nations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Asked about Mr Higgins\u2019s comments, senior spokespeople on Wednesday said the President was entitled to his views, but they were different from Government policy.<\/p>\n

Previously, it was the convention the President did not express views in public that were in conflict with Government policy. However, Mr Higgins has occasionally deviated from this norm, especially in recent years on foreign policy matters. Though many people in Government have resented his interventions, they have refrained from any criticism of the President, at least in public.<\/p>\n

Asked about the President\u2019s remarks, the Government Press Secretary and Deputy Press Secretary \u2014 who speak for the Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin<\/a> and T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> respectively \u2014 told reporters at the weekly Cabinet briefing on Wednesday evening that the Government did not favour the approach advocated by Mr Higgins, saying instead Ireland was committed to working through multilateral organisations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that is the official Government policy,\u201d the Government press secretary said. \u201cThe President has always been very outspoken … He is entitled to hold those views, but the Government approach is working through the UN and the EU.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters at the ploughing event on Tuesday, Mr Higgins said: \u201cI believe myself that the kind of actions that are necessary now are the exclusion of those who are practising genocide, and those who are supporting genocide with armaments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe must look at their exclusion from the United Nations itself, and we should have no hesitation any longer in relation to ending trade with people who are inflicting this at our fellow human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Irish Government to ratify landmark UN high seas treatyOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The charter of the United Nations provides for the suspension or expulsion of states from the UN. No state has ever been expelled, though South Africa was suspended by a vote of the General Assembly in 1974 due to its apartheid policies.<\/p>\n

Last night, a spokesman for the President said: \u201cThe President was speaking in response to the clear conclusions of genocide made in the report chaired by Navi Pillay. He was suggesting that such an action is among the options which could be considered by the international community, in line with previous precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Government has distanced itself from remarks made earlier this week by President Michael D Higgins about Israel,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70313,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,3428,6,71,11,12,15,16,1874,5765,5,44,7,8,2863,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-70312","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-government","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-michael-d-higgins","20":"tag-micheal-martin","21":"tag-news","22":"tag-simon-harris","23":"tag-top-stories","24":"tag-topstories","25":"tag-united-nations-un","26":"tag-world","27":"tag-world-news","28":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70312\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}