The Orange Order is to reconsider its decision not to travel to Dublin to meet the President, Mrs McAleese, in the wake of her apology for remarks in which she appeared to compare Northern Protestants to Nazis.
Ahead of the President's apology on Friday evening, the Orange Order abandoned plans to meet her in Dublin in March.
Her initial comments generated a fierce response. Before her apology, talk shows on BBC Radio Ulster were inundated with thousands of calls and messages condemning her remarks. Mrs McAleese said on Friday evening and in subsequent interviews that she was desperately sorry for her remarks. "Sectarianism is a shared problem. It is my fault for not saying that absolutely as clearly as I always do 110 times out of 111. This was 111 unfortunately."
As a result of the apology, her scheduled meeting could take place although the Order has not yet taken a formal decision on the matter. The Orange Order accepted the apology, although with some reservations, as did most unionist politicians and Protestant representatives.
Mr Drew Nelson, grand secretary of the Orange Order, said yesterday that his first reaction to to Mrs McAleese's comments was one of "utter disbelief" which translated to "anger as the implications of what she had said sank in".
He added: "We obviously accept that apology. When we call for an apology we are not going to be churlish in not accepting it."
Mr Nelson said, however, he had "one little niggling" concern "that may affect matters" and that was over why it took more than 24 hours for Mrs McAleese to issue her apology.
"The apology on the face of it is fulsome, but if it was to be a 100 per cent apology she would have realised right away that what she said was wrong, and should have apologised immediately," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
Mr Nelson however indicated that the Orange Order may yet meet Mrs McAleese. "We will reconsider a future meeting because there are many issues that we want to talk to the authorities in the Republic of Ireland about," he said. These included "issues like the development of the Battle of the Boyne site, which is important to us and which is now owned by the Government of the Republic of Ireland" and the Nally report into the Omagh bombing.
"Two of our members were murdered at Omagh and we have a duty to the widows and orphans of our members who have been murdered not to forget about these things," said Mr Nelson.
Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams said the DUP response to the President's original remarks was "well over the top".
"The fact is there is sectarianism in the North. It is a sectarian state: those who proclaim a 'Protestant parliament for a Protestant people'; those who discriminated against people on the basis of their religion," he said. "I don't want to draw any comparison with the Nazis or anyone else but certainly there was a system of apartheid.
"One of the great difficulties is that . . . political unionism has yet to accept any responsibility for the conflict in Ireland, not least the conflict of the last 30 years. And until they do that you are always going to get this denial, and unfortunately the DUP is a party in denial."
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