President has lost the sure touch she displayed during her first term

DURING her first term as President, Mary McAleese never put a foot wrong, but in the past year she has fouled up on a number of occasions. Indeed, she seems to be suffering from that dreaded public disease, foot-in-mouth.

President has lost the sure touch she displayed during her first term

Little over a year ago she was speaking in connection with the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz extermination camp. She complained that the Nazis had given “to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way that people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred, for example, of Catholics”.

What she said was true, but it was only half of the truth. The full truth would have been to admit that there are also Catholic parents in Northern Ireland who have inculcated in their own children the same kind of irrational hatred of Protestants.

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