HE can be trusted, he says.

This is despite going back on his word, not once, but twice, on two big issues.

President Michael D Higgins, aged 77, is seeking a second term in office, having previously said he would only serve one.

He, too, promised that he would provide a full, formal statement on the spending of the annual, €317,000, tax-free allowance granted to the President by the Oireachtas, only to now say this will be done after polling day. He has, to be fair, committed to returning €200,000 of his allowance at the end of his term.

At a 70% approval rating in the latest Red C poll, and with 12 days to the election, his U-turns appear not to be hurting him.

So, when we meet in his campaign headquarters, in Dublin, I begin by asking him to respond to the charge that he cannot be trusted.

“I think that is very unfair: how people should judge it is to look at my record in standing for election at every level, answering questions at every election, being in Cabinet, being a TD, so my record stands, in terms of authenticity,” he says.

So, why the change of heart about standing again?

“Around that time, in 2016, more and more people were saying to me I should continue and I concluded, myself, that the best thing I could do, the best way I can serve for the next seven years, is by running again. I immediately set about not merely extending the term of office, but setting about developing four new pillars for a new seven years,” he says.

He does express regret in not being clearer about how he would address the €317,000 allowance.

“Perhaps I could have been very much clearer,” he says.

He now says it would be wrong of him to clarify the situation before the campaign is over, “merely for my own comfort”.

“I am open, if re-elected, to offering a better way to offering transparency on it. It would be wrong of me to issue a statement for my own comfort or to change my diary so I could campaign more"

Another source of controversy has been the position of his executive assistant, Kevin McCarthy, who was his driver during the 2011 campaign.

Reports in 2013 and 2014 suggested that Mr McCarthy was living in, or at least staying at, Áras An Uachtaráin, that other staff members felt unhappy at being blocked by him in accessing President Higgins, and also that the €317,000 allowance was used to top up his salary.

On the campaign trail, President Higgins reacted sharply to that claim, describing it as “outrageous”.

I ask him why he reacted so angrily to the story.

“I did react. He [Kevin McCarthy] is a graduate of business and corporate studies, with honours, and a masters in internationalisation, and he kept getting described as someone who drove me around in the campaign, and that was most unfair.

“People are free to ask me questions about what they like, but I didn’t like the idea that he was not able to defend himself.

“The other side is that he was a manager of a constituency office and also as part of a labour office in Dail Eireann. He also has the best knowledge of protocol of anyone I know.”

“It is important not to put anymore burdens on him. He is not the candidate, I am the candidate,” the President says.

When I press him about the reports of other staff leaving, because they were denied access to him, as was suggested in 2014, amid some departures from the Áras, President Higgins says: “I know, I read that, and those reports were totally uninformed. The one person who did speak said that she wanted to make clear that she said she never had any access to me blocked by Kevin McCarthy.”

President Higgins has often struggled with the limitations of the job, saying the “adjustment” to life in the Áras took up to two years.

“There was certainly an adjustment, the immediate one: what you are adjusting to in the first year and a half or so is a loss of privacy,” he says.

“You are not as free as you were to ring up your friends. I am deeply immersed in Galway society, from Galway United to my neighbours. What I did find, in those first two years, when I travel abroad I would give an address, but when I would go down to Galway, I would bring back a box of books, so I was moving my library box by box.

“You suddenly had to say where you were all the time; you realise other people are depending on your answers. It wasn’t as casual as it otherwise might be. Myself and my actress wife were not people who exactly lived by strict routines,” he says.

He confirms a story I had heard before, that he ambled down to the Hole in the Wall pub, beside the Phoenix Park, to watch football.

“I did go down, but I was accompanied by my personal security detail and, by the time we got down, it was half-time. I have not gone out unaccompanied,” he says.

As to that adjustment, he often found himself at odds with the mandarins in government, who fretted he was crossing the line into live political matters.

He caused controversy when he appeared to criticise German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and then French president, Francois Hollande, and the departure from a “social Europe”, but, too, when he backed an inquiry into the death of Savita Halappanavar, though the Government was opposed to the idea.

I ask him does he know he has ruffled feathers in Government Buildings.

“Absolutely and very deliberately,” comes the reply.

Does he worry about doing so, I ask. “Oh, no, not at all. It is inevitable that that would happen,” he states.

I ask him to expand on the tensions between the Aras and government.

“I don’t know what the range, depth or quantity of the conversations is with the secretary general to the Government, but I remember, in the early days, some people in my periphery would use phrases like ‘have I crossed the line?’ or ‘had I put my foot over the line?’, so one of the characteristics of the job is judgement. Judgement is important,” he says.

“I’ll give you an example, like the case of Savita. Here is the choice facing me. I am in England, attending an event, and this has happened and I know that has affected women and people are very concerned.

I carefully used my words that an inquiry should be sufficient to meet the reasonable expectations of her husband and should have consequences and proposals to ensure that something like this never happens again.

“I do remember people saying, people arguing archaic kind of thinking, saying this is something he shouldn’t be doing. It is something that I am absolutely convinced was the right thing to do. It is what the President, directly elected and exercising judgement, should do.”

But in probably his strongest comments, President Higgins has spoken about the reasons why the position of the Catholic Church in Ireland has waned since 2011, especially in light of reports into Cloyne and the Tuam babies scandal.

“It has totally changed. You mention Cloyne: how could it ever be acceptable that you would have a seperate legal system, that placed itself above the legal system of the State, in which the State is responsible to the people?” he asks.

“Secondly, in relation to the idea of conscience. If you are in fact going to respect conscience, how can you be absolutist in making statements about women and about relationships between men and women.

“In terms of the North, how can you say that you are genuinely in favour of things going forward in the North, when you are insisting that children be educated seperately, on a denomination basis,” he says.