Mr Derek Nally has done himself no favours by his attempt to label Prof Mary McAleese as a supporter of Sinn Fein. Contrary to whatever he may have hoped to achieve, he has placed a serious question mark over his own judgement while enabling Prof McAleese to garner a significant bonus in public sympathy. She has nothing to answer for. Mr Nally based his accusations on a leaked section of an internal memorandum from one official to another within the Department of Foreign Affairs. The author was reporting views on the peace process to her superior. It was part of an exercise undertaken on an ongoing basis by diplomats whose task it is to inform policy-makers in Dublin. Of necessity it is often compacted, attenuating views and positions. It is possible - just about - to interpret the views attributed to Prof McAleese as signifying that she would welcome increased electoral support for Sinn Fein. But Mr Nally has built a series of quite improper insinuations on the back of that interpretation. The argument that a vote for Sinn Fein is a vote for peace has never found favour with this newspaper. But it is a view, legitimately and sincerely held by many who have striven for peace, that the more Sinn Fein is strengthened electorally the less will be the influence of the gunmen.
The most charitable interpretation of Mr Nally's attack is that his tongue ran away with him. But his allegations were serious and while he has ceded a little ground he has not withdrawn them. To imply that Prof McAleese "works to a different moral agenda than most people in the Republic" or that she is not "a proper person" to be President, linking it all to murdered gardai, is dangerous demagoguery, bordering on an outright smear attempt. It may be that he was ill-advised. He was certainly ill-informed. His retort to Prof McAleese that she should sue the official if she was misrepresented reflects a poor understanding of the law. Communications between officers of the State are not amenable to defamation claims. If they were, every garda in the country would be a defendant.
Prof McAleese defended herself with calm dignity on television. She explained how she had been asked to participate in the Redemptorist Peace Initiative in an endeavour to restore the IRA ceasefire. She did no more and no less than might be expected of someone in her influential position. Indeed, she would have been remiss had she not responded as she did. Her comments as paraphrased by the Foreign Affairs official were no more than the observations of any well-informed middle-class Northern nationalist who has watched with apprehension the steady rise in influence of Sinn Fein over the past three years.
Derek Nally has entered the presidential race as a straight talker. He is also a gentleman. And it would be a gentlemanly thing even at this stage if he were to apologise to Prof McAleese for seeking to label her as a fellow-traveller of the Provisionals. She no more supports violence than Mr Nally himself. An attempt to portray her - or anyone else - who has sought to be a persuader for peace as somehow contaminated is monstrously unjust. It is the last thing Derek Nally should allow himself to be associated with.