The Ireland Podcast

McAleese said that, from the first time she met the queen, before becoming president, “I knew that she wanted to come to Ireland”.

FORMER PRESIDENT OF Ireland Mary McAleese has said the late Queen Elizabeth of Britain had a very low opinion of Protestant religious leader and loyalist politician Ian Paisley. 

Speaking to The Ireland Podcast, McAleese reflected on her experience of politics, religion and the peace process in the North.

When it came to the subject of the late British monarch, she spoke about Elizabeth’s love of hurling.

McAleese said they spoke about the sport while travelling together in a car with King Albert II of Belgium and his wife Paola in November 1998. They were on the way to an Island of Ireland war memorial peace park in Belgium.

“We were knee to knee, two opposite two and I was sitting next to Queen Paola, and she (Elizabeth) starting talking about shinty and hurling,” McAleese said.

Shinty is a Scottish game similar to hurling. 

“She loved shinty and she loved hurling and she knew a lot about both of them.”

“We also mentioned Paisley of course,” she said, noting that “he had stayed out of the Good Friday Agreement, stayed out for seven years.” 

She said Queen Elizabeth “abhorred him and his politics” and had “no time for him whatsoever”. 

“And he had never been very nice to her anyway. He was quite scathing about her and said some terrible things when she went and saw the pope and that sort of thing.

“So we were talking about him and Queen Paola said to us, ‘Who is this man Paisley you were talking about, I don’t know him’.

“And the queen looked at her and said, ‘Oh lucky you’.

“She had a fabulous sense of humour, you know, and I was privileged to see that on quite a number of occasions.”

Queen Elizabeth ll and Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh arrive at Aras An Uachtarain in Dublin with President Mary McAleese and Dr Martin McAleese in 2011 Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo

McAleese said that, from the first time she met the queen, before becoming president, “I knew that she wanted to come to Ireland”. 

“She told me that it was one of her great sorrows that she had never been able to come to the Republic and that she felt that because of that her contribution to peace was, in a sense, incomplete.”

McAleese said she offered to help her in any way she could. Then, when she became president, the queen reminded her, “You made a promise”.  

“I said, I did and we’ll keep it, but it took 14 years to get to the point where it became feasible.” 

The visit eventually came right at the end of McAleese’s second term in office and, against the suggestions of one diplomat, she insisted it be a full, three-day state visit.

She said the queen would be coming “as a Christian pilgrim, on a pilgrimage of reconciliation and sorrow, of genuine sorrow for the past”.

“So, I said, we have to believe in that. And of course, it ended up being a four-day visit.”