How will Higgins react to Trump’s courtesy call?

If Michael D Higgins is still president when US president Donald Trump pays a courtesy call in mid-November, it will represent a very different occasion to previous visits by controversial Republican US presidents.

Mr Higgins, then a senator, was one of the leading protesters when Ronald Reagan visited Ireland in 1984. When Air Force One arrived at Shannon airport, the then senator addressed a group of about 500 protesters, decrying Mr Reagan for alleged US collusion with atrocities in El Salvador and the right-wing Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

Higgins excoriated TDs and senators who were in attendance for Reagan's address to a joint sitting of the Oireachtas

When Mr Reagan was conferred with an honorary doctorate in UCG, now NUI Galway, Mr Higgins led a protest outside. Dressed in full academic robes, he and other lecturers, held a mock “deconferring ceremony”.

Later Labour Party posters were distributed around Dublin with the legend “Kick Reagan Out”. They included Mr Higgins’ signature.

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He also excoriated TDs and senators who were in attendance for Mr Reagan’s address to a joint sitting of the Oireachtas, as suffering from political amnesia.

During an official visit to Australia last year, the President criticised “the politics of fear” including anti-immigrant sentiment that led to Brexit and the election of Mr Trump.

He said that “old-fashioned, ignorant, anti-migrant prejudice”, were the underlying factors.