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The issues of protocol surrounding whether President Michael D Higgins should have accepted the invitation to attend a religious service in Northern Ireland next month have unfortunately become a matter of intense controversy. The only positive thing that could be said about the dispute is that it has made it possible to write a sentence containing the words “Northern Ireland” and “protocol” without any reference to Brexit.
It has now been clarified helpfully that the invitation received by the President referred to him correctly as “President of Ireland” and not, as had been suggested at one point, as “President of the Republic of Ireland”. Any Head of State is entitled to be addressed by their correct title. I doubt, in any event, if such an unintended error in nomenclature would have led the President to turn down the invitation. It was DUP members, rather than the organizers of the event, who referred to the President by an incorrect title, with Sir Jeffrey Donaldson implying disingenuously that the title, “President of Ireland”, had somehow been overtaken by the Good Friday Agreement. The subsequent comment by Conor Burns, Minister of State at the Northern Ireland Office, that attendance was a matter for the “President of the Irish Republic” was at best careless.
The substantive issue that arose from the invitation was the stated purpose of next month’s service “to mark the centenaries of the partition of Ireland and the formation of Northern Ireland”. Here protocol and politics were closely intertwined and posed a dilemma for the President. On the one hand, the President, as someone who has been and remains to the forefront in promoting reconciliation, could have decided to attend the event. He could have noted that the intention was to “mark” rather than to “celebrate” the controversial events of a hundred years ago. He could have attended the religious service in the spirit in which the church leaders who issued the invitation no doubt intended it, as a prayerful ceremony to reflect on past events that have led to a century of much pain and heartache on all sides.
On the other hand, the President will have been aware that partition remains a deeply controversial and contested issue across the island and that many in Northern Ireland regard him as their President. He will have understood that the distinction between “marking” and “celebrating” can be deliberately muddied and would have been, by some, in this instance. He may have considered that the wording of the invitation, even if it refers to acknowledging failures and hurts, did not fully capture the organizers’ intention of marking the full complexity of our history, including radically divergent views on partition. He was also aware of his obligation to avoid political controversy; indeed in 2016 he pulled out of an event in Belfast to mark the Easter Rising because it did not have cross-community support.
The President could have decided to accept the invitation, especially if a more appropriate wording could have been found. Many would have welcomed that. However, it would be unreasonable to suggest that his decision was simple and straightforward. Archbishop Eamon Martin, one of the organizers of the event, has acknowledged that he and his fellow church leaders knew it would be contentious.
There is a strong possibility that, as often in political matters and indeed in all human affairs, a degree of misunderstanding may lie at the heart of how this controversy has arisen and developed. Perhaps the definition of next month’s religious service could have been gently tweaked. Maybe it could have been more fully explained in the correspondence and therefore more fully understood.
Archbishop Martin has said that the word “partition” was added with a view to acknowledging the extent of the “division and difficulties” that followed from the events of a century ago. The reference to “partition” was, I have no reason to doubt, added to the invitation, in good faith, for that very reason. However, the reasoning behind the inclusion of the reference to “partition” doesn’t leap from the page. More explicit words acknowledging the different perceptions and aspirations might have been helpful.
Another obvious misunderstanding, propagated by some, is that the President is not deeply committed to reconciliation. Whatever views people may take of his decision in this case, intemperate criticism does a disservice to the process of reconciliation.
Misunderstandings, by definition, are capable of being disentangled. If misunderstandings have played a part in the present controversy, it should not be entirely impossible to address them. The President has understandably said that it is too late to revisit the invitation he received. However, it is not necessarily too late to tweak the definition of the event, or the wording of invitations to it, so as to capture more accurately the complexity of its very worthy intended purpose.
Bobby McDonagh is a former ambassador to London, Brussels and Rome