McAleese says sorry to Protestants for Nazi remarks

PRESIDENT Mary McAleese has apologised for remarks which offended Northern Protestants during a radio interview on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

Mrs McAleese said last night she had been “absolutely devastated” by the controversy her comments had aroused and was “deeply sorry” for what she had said.

The President, who is in Britain, said that her remarks had caused hurt and she wanted to take back that hurt.

“What I said was clumsily expressed and I should have made it clear there was sectarianism on both sides,” the President said.

“I should have included the Protestant as well as the Catholic community in what I was saying,” she added.

“I accept absolutely that in relation to sectarianism we all have plenty of things to be ashamed about.”

A spokesperson for the President said it had not been her intention to cause offence to anyone.

“What she said came out the wrong way and the President accepts that this was entirely her fault.”

The spokesperson said that the President felt she owed it to those she had worked with across the sectarian divide to apologise for her remarks.

She said the President agreed with the view of the Orange Order spokesperson Drew Nelson that her remarks concerning sectarianism were incomplete and hoped that the good relations she enjoyed with that organisation would continue.

“The last thing she would want to do would be to create the impression that sectarianism came from only one side of the community,” the spokesperson said.

Mrs McAleese’s comments about Protestants sparked an angry reaction from unionist politicians, with the UUP’s Michael McGimpsey describing them as “deep-seated sectarianism“.

The DUP’s Ian Paisley Jnr accused the President of an “irrational and insulting” attack on “an entire generation of Protestant people”.

The Orange Order cancelled planned talks with Mrs McAleese in Dublin in March in protest at what it described as the President’s “grossly offensive slur” against the Protestant community in the North.

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland programme on Thursday, ahead of attending the Auschwitz remembrance ceremony in Poland, Mrs McAleese said “They [the Nazis] gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational and outrageous hatred, for example, of Catholics.”