Gavan Reilly: Michael D’s problem is indirect answers to direct questions

This week’s column comes from New York, where events have turned out to be a little more dramatic than travelling journalists had anticipated. The rising tension between Israel and Hezbollah threatens to completely overshadow the UN General Assembly, where a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was a primary goal.

But domestically the big drama happened at a nondescript rostrum in a passageway outside the General Assembly auditorium, and then in a corporate boardroom a half hour’s walk away.

Firstly, some things to clarify: Michael D Higgins did not, explicitly, accuse Israel of leaking a private letter he sent to his new Iranian counterpart in July. (He says the letter was a routine missive of goodwill to send to a newly-appointed counterpart head of state, and is simply a matter of diplomatic normality.) He did, however, accuse Israel of ‘circulating’ the letter to instigate some criticism and fallout.

The issue at hand in the last 48 hours is that when he said this, the Úachtarán was responding to a direct question about his suspicions on whether the letter had been “leaked”. Higgins was alluded to there being something underhand about how the letter became controversial; he was asked if he suspected it had been leaked; and said he knew exactly where it had come from - before volunteering that it had been “circulated” by the Israeli embassy.

Your columnist then asked, directly, how he thought Israel might have come into the possession of an otherwise private letter between the presidents of Ireland and Iran. Higgins said he didn’t know, and also remarked that the Israeli ambassador was “not in residence”. Dana Erlich was recalled to Jerusalem after Ireland’s recognition of Palestinian statehood in May and hasn’t returned since.

So: asked if he suspected the letter was ‘leaked’, Higgins declared that Israel had ‘circulated it’, didn’t know how they would have got it, and lamented that the ambassador was no longer in Dublin to be questioned about it.

The universal understanding of every reporter present was that the President had suggested Israel leaked the otherwise unpublished letter. Even those in the Áras travelling party recognised that they could see how we reached that conclusion.

But instead of trying to de-escalate the situation, and recognising that his own words had led to avoidable confusion, a day later the President doubled down. “If you decided to put a spin on the language, you take responsibility,” he thundered at journalists who had the temerity to suggest his own commentary was largely to blame. “I’m not responsible for the misuse of my language.”

It’s worth noting, by the way, that while Higgins was peeved at journalists for taking a plainly rational understanding of his comments – even if the gist of the claim appeared anti-Semitic to the Israeli and Jewish communities – he still doubled down on his position. The letter was a well-wishing nod to another new head of state, and the idea that Israel would try to instigate a diplomatic controversy out of it would be seen by some as “quite improper”. They were wrong, it would seem, to make an issue of routine correspondence.

Those without the benefit of seeing the President’s two media engagements in full - about 55 minutes between them - might think the media had put words in Higgins’ mouth and decided to simply run with a story that had no grain of truth at all.

But those with the luxury of watching them all will come away with a much clearer understanding of the issue as it now arises: even on non-contentious questions, the President will not specifically answer a question, but rather address what he presumes is its theme.

At his first press conference on Sunday – where he had already dissented from Simon Harris’ claim that new asylum applications were contributing to the housing crisis – I asked Higgins if he thought it was important for people in the Taoiseach’s position not to exacerbate the social tensions that clearly exist in Ireland at the moment.

His three-and-a-half minute answer included monologues on how southern Africans were bearing the brunt of climate changers despite contributing least to carbon emissions, and the value of the ‘social floor’ in ensuring that people were protected from the worst impacts of austerity.

On Monday – largely as an attempt to defuse the room after some hostile exchanges between President and press – I asked an interminably wonky question about whether this week’s UN business might actually be the death knell for multilateralism, instead of the rebirth its top figures have been hoping for. His meandering reply - again, almost four minutes long - began by noting how the UN Millennium Development Goals were directly succeeded by … the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

His replies might have been substantive, and entailing thoughtful critiques about the state of the planet and its peoples, but neither had the blindest bit of relevance to the direct questions I’d put to him. You might say the same was true of his comments on Israel and Iran: they might have addressed what he thought the theme of the question was, but they’re not actually answering the question itself.

For as long as a freewheeling intellectual figure like Michael D Higgins replies to directly-worded questions with eloquent but indirect responses, there are always going to be risks of misunderstandings. Some might have no consequences, but others will. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that further diplomatic boo-boos will be avoided in his final year of office.