McAleese faces hostile reception on Belfast visit
But there were ominous warnings last night that she might receive a hostile reception in loyalist parts of the city.
In keeping with previous visits, the President plans to meet with Catholic and Protestant groups during her trip to her home city.
By proceeding with the visit, which was planned before last week’s controversy, the President is understood to want to return to the bridge-building work between communities that was the hallmark of her first term in office.
However, PUP leader David Irvine said last night that there was a danger that some people might heckle or throw stones and that Protestant groups might now avoid meeting the President.
“It will take some time to heal the damage that has been done,” he said on RTÉ’s The Week In Politics.
Last night, Mrs McAleese’s spokesperson confirmed the one-day visit will proceed on Thursday, February 24, but the schedule would not be finalised until a week beforehand.
According to the spokesperson, every time the President goes up North there is a cross-community element to her visit, as would be the case this time.
The President said at the weekend that she was very pleased and relieved with the generous reaction to her apology from Protestant leaders in the North.
In her apology on Friday, Mrs McAleese said she was “deeply sorry” for comments the previous day, when she said the Nazis gave their children an irrational hatred of the Jews “in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics”.
The remarks sparked furore in the North, with Ian Paisley Jnr denouncing them as disgusting, resulting in the President apologising for the hurt caused.
The President said she was devastated by the controversy she had inadvertently caused and that when she gave her examples of sectarianism, she had not balanced it out by saying it was a problem for both communities in the North.
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