Higgins failed to seek Government advice before giving Castro eulogy

It is the Government not the President which leads in setting out Ireland’s position in the world, writes Gerard Howlin

I COULD only think of Lady Diana Mosley last Saturday when I read our president’s rhapsodising of Fidel Castro. The great society beauty met Adolf Hitler; became enamoured with National Socialism; and left her first husband to marry the British fascist Sir Oswald Mosley. Reminiscing in a television interview much later about Hitler, who did things she regretted were “inexcusable”, she enunciated in an accent that could cut crystal how back then “the man I knew was somebody of whom one could not believe that”.

“Terrible things had happened”, but on dictators generally she mused that “people went to see them and found them charming”. It seems Fidel charmed Michael D. And Diana Mosley was right, most monsters can be perfectly charming.