Michael D Higgins with Raul Castro in Havana during a state visit to Cuba in 2017. Photo: Maxwell’s Michael D Higgins was sent a box of Havana cigars every year by Cuba’s Castro brothers, comedian Tommy Tiernan has claimed. As he had stopped smoking, the President shared the cigars among his friends, including Tiernan, who said he once got a batch sent by Raul Castro, the brother of Fidel and former chairman of the Communist Party in Cuba.
Mr Higgins was criticised in 2016 over the statement he issued on the death of Fidel Castro, which made no mention of human-rights concerns. In it, he praised the revolutionary dictator as “a giant among global leaders whose view was not only one of freedom for his people, but for all of the oppressed and excluded peoples on the planet’’. At the time, a spokesperson for Mr Higgins rejected the criticism as “both unsustainable and unwarranted”.
The claim about his receiving the cigars from the Castro brothers was made by Tiernan during a podcast interview with US comedian Bill Burr, which has been shared online. Tiernan described himself as a “good friend” of the President and said that in the 1970s and 1980s when he was a Labour TD, he “made great friends with the Castros”. “He used to smoke cigars.
When he got elected President, he had given them up,” he said. “But the Castros used to send him a box of cigars every year and he had stopped smoking but he was very grateful and he used to share them out.” Tiernan said that on one occasion, he himself was given cigars sent to Ireland by Raul Castro, who is now aged 93.
Raul was named Cuba’s provisional head of state in 2006, so Fidel could recover from surgery. He later succeeded his brother as president, and was in office from 2008 to 2018. There has been speculation that the comedian might have Mr Higgins’s blessing to run for the Áras next year Tiernan said he still has the box that contained the cigars, “and it says ‘From the personal stash of Raul Castro’”.
He described them as “the most beautiful cigars I have ever smoked in my life”. He also told Burr he had never made this story known before, adding: “You’re the first person I’ve told.” A press officer at Áras an Uachtaráin declined to comment.
It is likely that Tiernan may have been exaggerating for comedic effect when he said the Castros sent cigars every year to Mr Higgins. It is known that when the President made a state visit to Cuba in April 2017, he was given cigars as part of the routine exchange of gifts. There was a further official gift of cigars two years later when Raul Castro’s successor as president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, visited Ireland.
Mr Higgins and Tiernan are such good friends that there has been speculation that the comedian might have his blessing to run for the Áras next year. On the podcast Path to Power , presented by Matt Cooper and Ivan Yates, it was said Tiernan has had meetings with Mr Higgins to discuss contesting the presidential election next year. Join the Irish Independent WhatsApp channel Stay up to date with all the latest news.
