FORMER PRESIDENT MICHAEL D. Higgins, a trenchant anti-war advocate during and before his tenure in Áras an Uachtaráin, has decried what he called the ‘endless rhetoric of militarism’

Higgins made the comments in an aside while he delivered the keynote address on the final day of the INTO (Irish National Teachers’ Organisation) conference in Killarney. 

Having left office last November, the former president showed he was still in combative form in a 30-minute speech which extolled the virtues of teachers and the formative influence on their pupils, as well as admitting that he felt at home in the company of trade unionists. 

In unscripted comments, Higgins rejected the idea “security was defined as lethal capacity” which he likened to a “species failure” and rejected calls for increasing Irish militarisation.”

“We do not have to commit ourselves to an endless rhetoric of militarism,” he said. 

“And those who recently called saying that Ireland must, in fact, follow interest, be as strong and be as lethal as everybody else, I have a totally different vision,” he said.

In another reference to conflict and militarisation, Higgins said that he had heard it said that one year of military expenditure at its current labour would have enabled us to “reduce extreme hunger and make a huge contribution to eliminating global poverty”. 

He decried the slow progress in implementing the United Nations 2030 Agenda, which he said was “seen as a shared universal project, which “would constitute a shared blueprint for peace and human development, founded on ethics and drawing on human rights and dignity”.

“Today just 18% of the Sustainable Development Goals are currently on track. Half of the 17 goals are showing “minimal or moderate progress”, while over a third are either “stalled or regressing”, according to the United Nations 2025 Report of the Sustainable Development Goals.”

During his address, the former president praised the INTO’s Global Citizen Initiative which he said was going from strength to strength and had been pleased to launch during his presidency.

He elaborated on the value of an education grounded in ethical values and suggested to teachers that they should “seek to inspire children to become engaged citizens, with critical capacity, unafraid to question the status quo, to look beyond the barriers of perceived wisdom, and to resist the easy but dangerous group-think which is responsible for so many of the injustices in our society, facilitated by an unaccountable social media’.

“It is critical that we facilitate, that our young citizens be educated as engaged, informed and participative citizens, respectful of difference, informed of the necessary courses of discourse, equipped with the skills and challenge decisions made by individuals and institutions in positions of power and authority ensuring such decisions are ethical and based on the common good.”

He also addressed the tone of public debate and how it had coarsened in recent times.

“I have to say, as somebody that has spent all of my life using words and speaking in public -  it is important we say that we reject the abuse of speaking in public in an offensive way.”

He praised the work of the INTO, which, he pointed out, had been established half a century before the State had been founded, and said he had been a “proud trade unionist since the age of 19″.

“The Trade Union tradition is a proud tradition,” he said. ” The Trade Union movement on this island is a united Trade Union movement, committed against racism at home and abroad.”

Teachers gave the former president a standing ovation as he concluded his address in the INEC in Killarney’s Gleneagle Hotel and the former president left after a presentation by the INTO President Anne Horan and the union’s general secretary John Boyle.