MICHAEL D HIGGINS has said he has no issue with transparency with regard to his expenses, but said that bringing freedom of information to the Presidency would need to ‘fit in with the Constitution’.
Speaking at his official campaign launch for a second term as President, 77-year-old Higgins said that his age is not an issue as he feels better than he did in 2011.
“My health is excellent. I have much more energy now than in 2011 because I got my knee done,” he said during a question and answer session after his formal speech.
I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, and I have a yoga teacher, so there’s hope for all of you.
I’m in great shape now for the second term.
During his speech at a swelteringly hot press conference, Higgins set out four themes which he said would govern his campaign, with Irish relations post-Brexit and an emphasis on reaching out to the country’s youth being very much to the fore.
He said his campaign will be “modern and energetic” and said it has been his “great privilege to serve the people of Ireland” as President.
Allowance
But, as expected, the main focus of the hour-long event came during the Q&A session which focused heavily on the news that emerged in recent days that the Presidency can avail of a €317,000 allowance annually which has no State oversight.
“This is not an alleged fund,” Higgins said. “It is a fund that is there, and it began in 1938.”
He said that fund, any of which remains unspent is returned to the Oireachtas, is primarily used for Presidential entertainment, such as tea parties, events like Bloomsday and those commemorating the victims of the Magdalen Laundries, and the visits of foreign heads of state.
“My predecessor (Mary McAleese) returned about €450,000,” he said.
It is a fund I never see, but I emphasise, it if voted for by the Oireachtas, it is within its gift to rescind it, but that would put a severe restriction on (Presidential) hospitality.
In truth, Higgins, a politician of some 40 years standing before winning the Presidency, seemed relatively unruffled throughout the media questioning.
He contended that he is “totally open to a formal mechanism” being put in place to monitor presidential expenses, but said that, while “on the one hand you want to give accountability”, people “must legislate within the Constitution”.
Pressed on this matter, as to whether or not he believed the Presidency should be subject to freedom of information, he would only say that any move to change the status quo “would have to it in with the Constitution”.
‘Independence important’
“The independence of the Presidency is very important. There are constraints that come with the role, and I’m very happy to live with them,” he said, adding that to change things as they stand could lead to “a very lessened version of the Presidency”.
He said that he will participate “in as many debates as I can”, although he will definitely not be participating during tomorrow’s first Presidential debate on RTÉ’s News at One due to prior Presidential commitments.
“The duties of the President have to be fulfilled,” he said, adding that “all the engagements I have were agreed some time ago”.
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He refrained for the most part from discussing his opposition for the coming campaign, with the exception of businessman Peter Casey, who yesterday said that he considers an intruder gaining access to Higgins’s office at Áras an Uachtaráin last week as ‘a coincidence’.
“This was an unemployed person, and I wished her well,” the President said. “How else should it be?” he added, while suggesting that Casey’s inference was a reflection that “that candidate is not too long back from America”.
Regarding suggestions that his Presidency may have been comfortable with running up expensive bills at hotels during foreign trips, Higgins said “I don’t care for staying in expensive hotels”.
‘Couldn’t care less’
I couldn’t care less if I stay in a tent.
He also dismissed the idea that the election is his to lose due to his standing in the polls.
“Why should it be?” he said.
Why can’t it be an election in which people offer different views?
He said that as far as he’s concerned the radical social change seen in Ireland in recent years is only the beginning.
We haven’t had enough change yet.
The campaign will now run for 30 days until polling day on Friday 26 October.
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