President Higgins apologises for 'throwaway remark' about security forum chairperson

President Michael D Higgins inspects a guard of honour during a state religious ceremony to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising leaders at Arbour Hill Cemetery in Dublin. Picture: Brian Lawless/PA

President Michael D Higgins has apologised to the chair of a Government forum on neutrality describing his comments as a "throwaway remark".

The President has been criticised after he hit out at the composition of the panels at the Consultative Forum on International Security, saying they include "the admirals, the generals, the air force, the rest of it" and described its chair Louise Richardson, as a person "with a very large DBE – Dame of the British Empire”.

In an interview with the Sunday Business Post, he added: “I think that there were a few candidates I could have come up with myself”.

However, President Higgins has now moved to clarify the remarks, which a spokesperson said were made "over the course of a long interview".

"The President intended no offence by such a casual remark. He apologised for any offence which he may have inadvertently caused to Prof Richardson by what was a throwaway remark."

Prof Richardson was previously vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford and is now president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a $4.7bn philanthropic foundation.

A spokesperson for the President said the comments were made "while he was looking at a copy of the programme for the Forum and was referring casually to the fact that almost every reference to Professor Richardson in the programme was in a bold typeface, with however, DBE in capital letters after her name. Indeed, the President’s exact words were 'a very large letter DBE'."

A statement released by Aras an Uachtaráin added: "As a political scientist and sociologist the President is familiar with Professor Richardson’s work. He has too, with others, an appreciation for the initiatives for which Professor Richardson was awarded her DBE, in attracting more undergraduates from non-traditional or deprived backgrounds to Oxford University."