ROI President Michael D Higgins changes name of his residence to Áras an Fectaráin – ‘I’ll talk no more rubbish at unionists,’ he vows.

REPUBLIC of Ireland President, His Excellency Michael D Higgins is to change the official name of his residence from Áras an Uachtaráin  to Áras an Fectaráin, TGL can exclusively reveal. 

President Higgins told TGL that he arrived at his decision “after a lengthy spot of ethical remembering” in the wake of some of his recent public remarks. 

One of these was the newspaper article where he accused all too many people in Great Britain of “feigned amnesia” about their imperial past.

The President backtracked on comments made at the recent Machnamh event where he had the audacity to suggest that there was a definite possibility of a probably maybe that an odd Irishman might have been a willing participant in the excess of colonialism.  

“I was doing a spot of ethical remembering, thinking about the way I waved all that aule post colonial bollox in the faces of that shower of hoores across the water,” he said, “now I wouldn’t be backing down on that after 800 years of oppression, let me tell you.

“But then I was thinking about our wonderful and delightful Protestant Unionist neighbours in Northern Ireland.

“Shur weren’t  they the very wee group came into existence as a result of all that colonialism, and there was me describing it in such a smelly fashion.

“I thought that perhaps it might have been counterproductive and hurtful, reminding them about an origin they can do nothing about, at a difficult and sensitive time, instead of creating shared peaceful narratives of understanding. 

“I wouldn’t want to leave them thinking that they were unwelcome in the new Ireland of equals or talking about them as if they weren’t there.”

“I suddenly realised that I had done both. I thought ‘jaysus Mickey you really are a  bit of a feckter’” 

The President indicated that this was the Presidential form of fecker.

“I resolved immediately to work on a narrative taking into account how they felt about it.

“Though it landed like a bombshell at the time, it really does make perfect sense after all the poo poo we have talked about rights and equality over the years.

“Jaysus shur if you took everyone with a colonial ancestry out of Ireland there wouldn’t be a fecker here and I’d be feckter over no one,” he concluded. 

“And so as punishment I have decided to change the name of my residence from Áras an Uachtaráin  to Áras an Fectaráin for the duration of my Presidency and maybe longer.”

Leitrim Ulster-Scots freedom activist Sawney McCleaver has cautiously welcomed the news saying it was a small step in the right direction. 

“If Leinster House was renamed ‘Gangster House,’ we might he going somewhere,” he concluded.