Has President Higgins overstepped the mark?

The assumptions that people are making that giving a newspaper interview are breaches of the constitution are not based on what the constitution says, but on either their interpretation of the constitution (only the Supreme Court gets to do that in a manner that actually counts, the rest of us can waffle on all we like), or based on their own personal opinions.

Article 13.7 clearly puts restraints on any messages addressed to the Oireachtas (this has clearly not happened, nothing in this interview states or implies that his remarks were specifically addressed to the Oireachtas) or to the Nation. If you're going to make a claim that this interview amounts to an address to the Nation, you're going to have to convince the Supreme Court that you're correct.

I sincerely doubt that you'd succeed.

For starters, at least one junior minister has publicly stated that he didn't breach the constitution:

Any public comments from Government ministers were very circumspect. Junior Minister Neale Richmond went the furthest saying that the President had gone "very close to the line" but had not crossed it.

Secondly, neither the Taoiseach, Tanaiste, nor any other member of the government has publicly stated that he's breached the constitution.

And then there's this:

But while some may agree or disagree with the sentiments, there is also the question of the President’s right to weigh in on Government policy.

The convention has been that Presidents do not critique the Government and that the office is above politics. But this is a practice rather than there being an explicit constitutional prohibition on a President expressing their views.

And President Higgins has not been shy about doing that on uncomfortable topic for this Government. He recently called housing a disaster and has been critical of the treatment of those in direct provision.

And this:

Undoubtedly, then, there are significant restrictions on what the President can do. At the same time, and contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution places very few restrictions on what the President might say. It is a common feature of the Irish political scene for Presidents to be criticised for allegedly stepping outside their constitutional domain almost every time they express an opinion that touches on some aspect of economic or social policy. However, the only formal restrictions are in Article 13.7; namely, where the President makes a formal address to either the Oireachtas or the Nation on a matter of national importance, the address must first be approved by the Government.

The leading text on Irish constitutional law observes that beyond the above, the law does not impose total silence on the President; and, moreover, that the President must be free to respond to criticisms of the manner in which he or she has exercised the powers and functions of the office. A similar point was previously made by the late Robert Elgie.

On the question of what is proper or seemly for the President to say, there is room for reasonable disagreement, and no hard and fast rules to guide us. Few would dispute that Presidents should avoid coming into direct conflict with the Government or favouring one political party over another.

But there is no such thing as complete neutrality: anyone who stands for President will stand for something, and will have expressed this during their election campaign. How else can people decide which candidate to vote for? And why should the President abandon these views having been elected on the back of them?

Whoever is elected President, he or she is not going to have the power to shape how we make our laws or spend our public monies. However, he or she will have some latitude to speak out on issues of importance, provided those speeches avoid conflicting with Government policy.

Current government policy, as reiterated by the Taoiseach today, is that Ireland should remain militarily neutral and is not going to join NATO:

The Taoiseach has said Ireland is not going to join NATO, adding that it is very clear the country is going to continue with military neutrality.

Leo Varadkar was speaking at the News Xchange conference in Dublin which is discussing the future of news media.

In response to a question about military neutrality, he said the forum has been established to have an in-depth conversation about the policy. He said the world has changed and it is an evolving situation, but maintaining neutrality is the policy of the Government.

Nothing in Higgin's remarks contradicts those policies as they are at present.

Criticising the upcoming Consultative Forum on International Security Policy, and expressing concerns that Ireland's current policies on military neutrality might change even to the extent of joining NATO, is not the same as criticising current government policy, which remains in line with Higgin's views, i.e. Ireland should remain militarily neutral and not join NATO.

If the government policy changes, then Higgins might not be able to criticise it, or at least not in a manner which breaches Article 13.7. But it hasn't changed so it's not possible to say correctly right now that Higgins has breached either the constitution or any informal conventions or expectations (even though not written into the constitution) about the role of a president.

Varadkar refusing to even criticise Higgins, let alone state he's breached the constitution.

Unless there's a dramatic u-turn after the next Government meeting, I think we can safely say this one is done and dusted, at least as far as the Government is concerned. And since the Government is the only body of people that could actually make that statement in a way that could potentially engage the constitution's provisions on impeachment (the rest of us are free to waffle on), anything further would just be hot air, of which the weather is providing more than enough for my tastes: adieu then.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has refused to comment on President Michael D Higgins’ remark about Ireland’s foreign policy.

Speaking to Virgin Media News this afternoon, Mr Varadkar said that joining Nato was not on the agenda of the Government or any political party in Ireland.

“There’s a long-standing convention that government ministers don’t criticise or comment on the president and that allows the presidency to be above party politics, so I don’t want to say any more than that,” he said.

“We need to beef up our own Defence Forces and we also need to work out how we can cooperate with Europe and other partners, but military neutrality is safe.”

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/taoiseach-refuses-to-comment-on-president-michael-d-higgins-remarks-on-irelands-foreign-policy-and-neutrality/a478722985.html