President Michael D Higgins: It is refreshing to see a feisty 81-year-old man keeping Ministers on their toes. But Higgins has little real power beyond his voice; he is a poet but governance is prose. Photograph: Colin Keegan, CollinsBusinesspeople and politicians are not so unalike. Both are adept at figuring out what is popular – businesspeople so they can sell it for profit, politicians so they can say it for praise. Often they go about this work in slightly different ways.
Few have a political proboscis as sharp as the one possessed by President Michael D Higgins. He demonstrated this yet again on Tuesday when he decried the Government’s policy approach to housing, citing the results of it as a “disaster” and a “great, great failure”. He knew what he was at. He let it all out in a crowd-pleasing speech in Naas at the opening of a new facility for young homeless people. Suddenly nobody was talking anymore about his botched comments on Nigeria. Instead, many people were praising him for his forthrightness and valour, while the rest, including Government Ministers, fumed impotently at his partisan tendencies. Higgins would have known the reaction. He is an ace marketeer, even if such a compliment might make him recoil.
Can any of the many dissenting voices here actually take a stab at a counter argument to the points raised in the article as opposed to the usual IT/FFFG/Vulture Funds/ Establishment blah blah blah grand conspiracy theory? 😂
This lad shouldn’t be President , I can’t think of a person who could be further out of touch with a normal Irish man
The comments here are ridiculous 🤣😂🤦♂️
If only these 'journalists' were as worried about the real issues facing this countries people he might not have to speak up.. No suprise to see the author of the cry piece
Drivel
the headline versus the caveat directly under the headline ... Who benefits from this kind of double speak? Who or what is it intended to silence?
The government deploying its media on Higgins.
FG client Journalism.
As he throw paying tenants out of his rental house in order to beat tax break.
Mark Paul. Who'd have guessed. Drivel.
If only as many words were written about those in power with the power to do something, anything really, about it.
His moral compass rhymes with that of the people. Expect change.
To the rescue of poor vulture funds comes the valiant IT
The establishment are hitting back!