The Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble has welcomed the apology by the President, Mrs McAleese over comments she made in a radio interview on Thursday during which she appeared to compare Northern Irish protestants to Nazis.
Mrs McAleese said last night she was deeply sorry for the remarks she made on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi death camp Auschwitz. "The words I used were clumsy," she said. "The last thing I would want to do is to create the impression that sectarianism came from only one side of the community."
Speaking today on RTE, Mrs McAleese said she was very pleased with the generous reaction to her comments.
She said in Thursday's radio interview: "They (the Nazis) gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way the people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics, in the same way that people give to their children an outrageous and irrational hatred of those who are of a different colour and all of those things."
Mr Trimble said: "I'm glad that there has been an apology, because I considered the remarks remarkably ill-judged.
"It is most unlike her to make a mistake of that nature, a mistake because it trivialises the experience of European Jewry and trivialises the Holocaust and also causes considerable offence in Northern Ireland.
"While no doubt that is true of some people, it is not right to lump together the Protestants of Northern Ireland and accuse them of this and to ignore the fact that a considerable amount of hatred exists within some members of the Catholic community," he said.
The DUP's Mr Ian Paisley Jnr said she had brought shame on her office and her country.
An Orange Order spokeswoman welcomed the apology, but said it was too early to reconsider a decision to cancel a meeting with the president. The organisation was due to meet her on March 8th to discuss the concerns of its members in the State.
"We are glad that she has responded so quickly. At our headquarters we have had more calls on this than most other things over the last few years. Her comments have pushed a lot of buttons in the north," the spokeswoman said.
"Mary McAleese has done a lot to build bridges but just one thing can do a lot to destroy that. We welcome that so quickly she came out and apologised."
The spokeswoman added that the Order was not interested in knee-jerk reactions to the apology.
PA