What the President said last night
Speaking from England last night to RTÉ and Today FM , the President said: "What I said I undoubtedly said clumsily. I should have finished out the example and it would have been a much, much better interview had I done that...It was never my intention going into it to simply blame one side of the community in Northern Ireland."
Asked by Today FM if she had made a mistake, she replied: "Without a shadow of a doubt. There is no putting a tooth in it. I was trying to explain by example how we have to try and fight racism and sectarianism on our own island. I should have finished out the example by saying Catholic and Protestant."
On RTE's Five Seven Live she said: "I have done so much over the years to try and show in every way that I can that we all have blame. I attach blame to myself and in every way that we can to humbly apologise and hang our heads for all that we have done to create the awful relationship which has blotted life and blighted life on our island and to try to commit ourselves and reach within ourselves to building up those friendships."
"I certainly hope that nothing that I have said will stop the march of peace and the march towards a culture of mutual respect. I was trying to encourage that culture of mutual respect," she said.
Though she had been trying to illustrate the lessons posed to today's society by Auschwitz, the President said "in trying to say that, I came across as putting the blame on one side of the community.
"That was entirely wrong. Having rectified that now, I hope as sincerely as I can because I am so devastated because good people that I know that I really would not want in any shape or form to hurt I am sure they were hurt by those words. I would want to take back that hurt."
She went on: "I hope if out of this there comes, maybe, a focus on that problem that we all have with sectarianism. There are plenty of examples, God's amount of examples, enough to make us ashamed.
"But there are also very wonderful examples and Martin and I have been privileged to see many of those examples of people reaching out hands of friendship, trying to bridge the distrust and trying to get to know each other anew and to create a better future and I hope that out of this will come, maybe, a renewed energy in that regard.
"I did not intend to inflict on one side of the community the entire burden of responsibility, or blame. Far from it. I take the point absolutely.
"This is shared blame. Sectarianism is a shared problem. It is my fault for not saying that absolutely as clearly as I always do 110 times out of a 111.. This was 111 unfortunately.
What the President said on RTÉ radio on Thursday morning
Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland before she attended the remembrance service at Auschwitz, the President, Mrs McAleese, said: "The Nazis didn't invent anti-Semitism, but they used it and built upon it. Anti-Semitism was for centuries an element for many [ people], who on the surface lived very good lives and would have regarded themselves as very good Christians.
"But they gave 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... in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of different colour and all of those things.
"...All of those hatreds that can in the wrong circumstances, outcrop like for instance on a street in Dublin in a young girl from Somalia being pelted by eggs. It can outcrop in a knife being used in a fight and a man from Eastern Europe being stabbed to death.
"It is a toxin, it's a poison that starts in a weak and diluted form, but when concentrated you get Auschwitz, you get Birkenau, you get Rwanda and you get Darfur. That is what you get if you don't stop that toxin."