Tag Archives: Joe Biden

Remembering Jimmy Carter’s words on Northern Ireland

Happy New Year. This first post of 2025 was going to focus on how Donald Trump’s return to the White House later this month threatens the Irish economy. The risk comes from whether Trump keeps his promises to cut corporate taxes and impose tariffs, either of which could incentivize US tech and pharmaceutical multinationals in Ireland to return production, jobs, and future investment to America. This could be a big blow to the incoming Irish government, which, like Trump’s administration, is still in formation.

Jimmy Carter discusses his cancer prognosis at the Carter Center, 2015. The Carter Center/M. Schwarz

But the Dec. 29, 2024, death of former US President Jimmy Carter, 100, deserves attention. Carter “had no Irish roots and never visited Ireland before or during his presidency,” Seán Donlon, Irish ambassador to the United States during the Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, wrote in the Irish Times. “Nevertheless, his intervention in Irish matters in 1977 was hugely significant and opened the door for the constructive involvement of subsequent presidents in working for peace and stability on the island of Ireland.”

Carter broke the mold of US deference to the UK on Northern Ireland as a domestic matter. He incurred opposition not only from London, but also from Foggy Bottom, headquarters of the US State Department. Even John F. Kennedy, famously the first Irish American Catholic president, toed this line, established at the time of partition by David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson.

Former Irish diplomat to Washington Ted Smyth told the Times there were two key factors at play in 1977: Carter’s natural inclination to see the North as a human rights issue, and the relationships that SDLP leader John Hume forged with US House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill and US Sen. Ted Kennedy, the late president’s brother. These two Irish Americans leveraged their roles in helping Carter achieve his legislative goals in Congress to push him into taking a position on Northern Ireland after nearly a decade of the Troubles.

Carter’s statement emerged on Aug. 30, 1977. In part, it said:

The United States wholeheartedly supports peaceful means for finding a just solution that involves both parts of the community of Northern Ireland and protects human rights and guarantees freedom from discrimination – a solution that the people in Northern Ireland, as well as the governments of Great Britain and Ireland can support. …  In the event of such a settlement, the U.S. Government would be prepared to join with others to see how additional job creating investment could be encouraged, to the benefit of all the people of Northern Ireland. (FULL STATEMENT)

While insisting the US would maintain its policy of “impartiality” on Northern Ireland, the statement opened the door to future involvement by saying the people there “should know that they have our complete support in their quest for a peaceful and just society.” The statement meant the Irish government for the first time was considered an equal partner with the UK. It promised economic aid if there was a solution.

Partial clip of an Associated Press story from page 6 of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 31, 1977.

It took another 21 years of diplomacy by three more American presidents (Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton) and numerous leaders on both sides of the Irish Sea to reach the Good Friday Agreement. The promised US economic aid “has been, and is being, delivered,” Michael Lillis, a former senior Irish diplomat noted in his Oct. 14, 2024, letter to the Times, shortly after Carter’s 100th birthday.

Carter made a private visit to Ireland in 1995, meeting with Irish President Mary Robinson at Áras an Uachtaráin. He extended his Habitat for Humanity work by building a house in the Dublin suburb of Ballyfermotin. He also found time for some fishing near Kilkenny.

As of publishing this post it is unclear what officials from Ireland, Northern Ireland, and/or the UK will attend Carter’s Jan. 9 state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Outgoing President Joe Biden, the nation’s second Irish American Catholic leader, will eulogize Carter, the longtime Sunday school teacher at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga.

Trump, meanwhile, has nominated Edward Walsh, president of the Walsh Company in New Jersey, as the next US ambassador to Ireland. One of Walsh’s key qualifications appears to be his membership in the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. His views on Ireland are unknown. Walsh’s US Senate confirmation is likely to lag others nominated for more critical positions in the administration.

Regardless of what happens with future transatlantic relations, Ireland and Northern Ireland have lost a key American ally of the past in Jimmy Carter.

‘Special relationship’ or the fading of the green?

This month marks the 100th anniversary of official diplomatic relations between the United States and Ireland. In presenting his credentials to US President Calvin Coolidge, Irish professor Timothy A. Smiddy became not only the first minister plenipotentiary appointed by the Irish Free State, but also the first representative from any member of the British Commonwealth.

Smiddy was first appointed as the Free State’s minister in the US in March 1922, but he had to combat both official disinterest and untrustworthiness among his own staff. US officials noted the Free State had the same dominion status as Canada and therefore believed that Irish matters should be addressed through the British embassy until told otherwise, RTÉ explains.

Irish ambassador Timothy Smiddy (left) with US Assistant Secretary of State J.B. Wright at the State Department on October 7, 1924. Library of Congress

To mark the centenary of bilateral relations, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris last week arrived in Washington to meet with US President Joseph R. Biden, Jr., a proud Irish American Catholic. The two leaders met at the White House, though a planned Rose Garden ceremony was postponed due to Hurricane Milton in Florida. In an official statement of fewer than 100 words, Biden “reflected on the deep cultural, people-to-people and economic ties between the two countries, and expressed confidence that the next 100 years will see even deeper cooperation.”

Deeper? I doubt it.

“As Biden’s presidency ends, it also represents the close of an era for a particular type of Irish-American political narrative and attitude given demographic, cultural and generational changes,” historian Diarmaid Ferriter wrote in the Irish Times. “…the days of an American president touching the pulses of Irish ancestral memory are over. For reasons of tradition, Irish visits to the White House may continue in some form, but they are unlikely to carry the same emotional heft or diplomatic significance of yesteryear.”

A Times‘ editorial made a similar point:

The last big wave of emigration from Ireland to the US was over 30 years ago. Moreover, the US is becoming much more diverse and Irish America is becoming much less coherent and influential. … The symbolic handing over of the shamrock may continue each March, but there is work to be done in maintaining Ireland’s real influence. The traditional calling card may not have the same power in future.

These sentiments reprise what was written during Biden’s April 2023 visit to the Republic and Northern Ireland, where he marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Since then Biden dropped his re-election bid, ending Ireland’s chance to keep a close friend in the White House for another four years. Neither Donald Trump nor Kamala Harris will have the same personal and political interests in Ireland. Trump could be hostile to Ireland because of its stance on Palestine, though moderated by the self-interest of his golf property in Clare.

Harris (Simon, not Kamala) said the 1998 peace process is the “single most important achievement” of Ireland’s relationship with the US. “Bipartisan support has come from all levels of government and from communities in each and every one of the 50 states, and today I say thank you for that to our friends across the US,” he said at Georgetown University.

The Embassy of Ireland, USA, in Washington, D.C. Irish and EU flags at right, Ukrainian flag on balcony.

The New York Times noted the centenary of US-Irish bilateral relations as a secondary point in a story focused on how the George J. Mitchell scholarship program in Ireland and Northern Ireland might have to be discontinued after 25 years due inadequate funding.  Mitchell was the US envoy who guided the Good Friday accords. Congress pulled funding for the scholarship program in 2014 during a round of budget cuts, and Northern Ireland did the same in 2015. The Irish government remains committed to matching funds raised by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance from philanthropic sources, according to the Times.

See Irish Envoy Received By The President on the front page of the October 18, 1924, issue of the The Gaelic American.

The Washington Post, like most US media outlets, ignored the diplomatic centenary except to mention the Rose Garden ceremony was being cancelled because of the hurricane. U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Richard E. Neal (D-Mass) issued a joint statement as co-chairs of the Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus. Their resolution to recognize the centenary and the “mutually beneficial economic relationship” has languished without passage since July, more a reflection on the dysfunction of the US Congress than the state of US-Irish relations.

Economic factors are likely to be the main driver of the US-Irish relationship going forward. Ireland’s well-educated, English-speaking workforce and strategic location as the geographic fulcrum between the US East Coast and European continent are strong advantages. Economics will influence the politics that determine any US involvement in a potential future referendum on whether to reunify the island of Ireland.

The term “special relationship” is typically applied to the US and the UK. But it seems just as appropriate for the US and Ireland over the long century measured from Charles Stewart Parnell’s 1880 tour. The two countries are likely to remain friendly, but the special, sentimental US-Irish relationship appears to be fading.

On recognition & partition: Ireland, Israel, & Palestine

Ireland’s decision to recognize Palestinian statehood has gravely disrupted diplomatic relations between Ireland and Israel. The latter condemned the gesture as “a reward for terrorism” perpetrated by Hamas in October and withdrew its ambassador from Dublin.

On May 22, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris said:

“On the 21st of January 1919 Ireland asked the world to recognize our right to be an independent State. Our ‘Message to the Free Nations of the World’ was a plea for international recognition of our independence, emphasizing our distinct national identity, our historical struggle, and our right to self-determination and justice. Today we use the same language to support the recognition of Palestine as a State.” Read his full statement, which also condemns the Hamas attack and supports the Israeli state.

The recognition has generated a new round of media stories about why the Irish identify so strongly with the Palestinians. Such reports began long before the civilian death toll in Gaza from Israeli military strikes surpassed the number of victims from the Hamas incursion into Israel.

Palestinian flag

Fourteen months before that attack, Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab wrote a piece headlined “Comparing the Palestinian and Irish-Catholic Struggles.” In each case, he wrote, “a powerful force oppressed local indigenous populations in a clearly racist and paternalistic fashion.” He also details their differences with today’s Northern Ireland.

Kuttab noted that U.S. President Joe Biden, during a July 2022 speech in East Jerusalem, compared the Irish-Catholic struggle against Great Britain to the Palestinians against Israel. But the journalist questioned whether Biden, a strong supporter of Israel, is capable of “real and actionable policies related to Israel and the Palestinians.” The Biden administration has criticized Ireland’s recognition of Palestine, which was joined by Spain and Norway. But Ireland enjoys far more attention and goodwill from the U.S. government than the other two European nations.

In late May, a headline in the Jesuit magazine, America, declared, “Ireland recognizes Palestinian statehood: Why many Irish people resonate with the conflict in Palestine.”

Notice for Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign protest against U.S. weapons to Israel being shipped through Ireland. The bill has been delayed.

The piece quotes an Irish documentary filmmaker who says the Irish have a deep cultural memory of British rule and know what being colonized by a stronger neighbor is like more than most nations. The filmmaker has documented the efforts of peace activists to prevent the U.S. military from using Shannon airport in the west of Ireland as a refueling stopover for its Middle East adventurism, including arms shipments to Israel.

Catherine Connolly, an independent member of the Irish parliament, raised the Shannon issue in a May 23 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! Connolly rejected the suggestion that Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is a prize for terrorism. “This is a step for peace,” she said.

Partition plans

The sectarian and territorial conflicts between the Palestinians and the Israelis parallel those between nationalists and unionists, Catholics and Protestants, in the north of Ireland, as detailed by M.C. Rast at History Today.

“Ireland and Palestine: United by Partition?” recounts how British officials in late 1930s planned to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in much the same way they had divided Ireland along sectarian lines nearly two decades earlier. A British report suggested “the gulf between Arabs and Jews in Palestine is wider than that which separates Northern Ireland from the Irish Free State.”

Rast also quotes Dublin’s Irish Independent newspaper as saying: “Partition is the Englishman’s favorite way out of a difficulty. But it is in itself a confession of failure.”

Economic impact

The economic impact of Ireland’s recognition of Palestine is beginning to take shape. Israel’s national airlines announced it will not renew direct flights to Dublin, which were only launched last year. Irish officials have said its €15 billion sovereign investment fund would divest from six Israeli companies, the Irish Times reported.

Israeli flag

Israel’s trade deficit with Ireland was €4 billion in 2022. Israeli imports totaled €5 billion, seventh largest among trading partners, but less than a quarter of the U.K.-leading €29 billion and U.S. second-place €22 billion.

Just under 600 Israelis lived in Ireland in 2022, according to the Central Statistics Office. The same census return does not indicate the number of Palestinians, while 2016 data showed fewer than 200 Palestinians. There were fewer than 3,000 Jews living in Ireland in 2016 compared to more than 63,000 Muslims. These figures do not include Northern Ireland.

For more on how activists in Ireland are responding to the recognition, visit the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the Ireland Israel Alliance.

Catching up with modern Ireland

March was a newsy month for Ireland, including the failed constitutional referendum, a sour St. Patrick’s Day visit to the White House, and the shock resignation of Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. Here’s some coverage and commentary that has caught my attention:

Varadkar resignation, Harris ascension, Donaldson resignation

Varadkar

The messiah complex: Neither Leo Varadkar, nor anyone else, could be a ‘savior’ of Fine Gael, Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times (Ireland)

“He was able, articulate and – in the twin crises of Brexit and the Covid pandemic – reassuringly adept. But his great talent was for riding out contradictions, not for resolving them. He managed to walk the line between politician and anti-politician, conservative instincts and an increasingly progressive society. …”

Update 1: The governing Fine Gael has selected Simon Harris as its new leader. There was no opposition to him within the party. At 37, he is set to become Ireland’s youngest taoiseach on April 9; a year younger than Varadkar when he took the job in June 2017. Some are already calling Harris the “TikTok Taoiseach.”

Harris was first elected to the Dáil in 2011 and managed Ireland’s COVID-19 response as minister for education, research and science. He has dismissed calls for a general election before the scheduled contest in March 2025.

Update 2: Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, abruptly resigned March 29 after being charged with sexual offenses. Leaders of the Northern Ireland say the development will not impact the power-sharing government, but it has rocked Irish and British politics.

Reverse reads on referendum result

“Ireland’s Snakes of Secularization“, National Catholic Register (USA)

There is a very understandable desire among the faithful in Ireland — and elsewhere — to interpret this month’s rejection by Irish voters of a pair of “woke” constitutional amendments as a decisive Catholic inflection point. According to this narrative, the unexpected and overwhelming rejection of these amendments represents a watershed moment in terms of reversing the tide of secularization that has washed over Irish society in recent decades. Unfortunately, that’s probably untrue. … The hostility of voters toward the progressive inanities expressed by both amendments can’t be taken as a sign that secularism is now generally on the wane in Ireland — or that a concomitant rebirth of Catholic faith is broadly underway.

“Ireland and the terrible truth about wokeness“, Spiked (England)

Ireland has become hyper-woke. Its elites are fully converted to the gender cult. They promote the ruthless policing of ‘hate speech’, which really means dissent. They damn as ‘far right’ anyone who raises a peep of criticism about immigration. Their culture war on the past is relentless. Woke is the state religion of Ireland now. And if you thought Catholic Ireland was sexist, irrational and illiberal, just wait until you see what wokeness unleashes. … The irony is too much: in ostentatiously distancing themselves from bad old religious Ireland, the elites have created a system of neo-religious dogmas that makes the Catholic era seem positively progressive in comparison.

Green (and blue) at the White House

Biden

Can the Irish Get Biden to Change His Policies on Gaza?, New York (USA)

Many of the actual Irish — the ones who came over from Éire for this annual celebration of the shamrock diaspora — spent the afternoon trying to talk sense to Biden over his Gaza policies, and his confounding (to them) support of Israel’s relentless military response to Hamas. … The Irish have a long-held kinship with the Palestinians. They see parallels between their struggle against Israel and the Irish struggle against British rule. They see in the famine that is gripping Gaza today a tragic echo of their own. This has been true for decades, but never more so than now. … So just beneath all the stout suds, these were the fault lines on display at Biden’s St. Patrick’s Day party this year: his assumption that the Irish were his friends and that so were the Israelis. But it’s no longer so easy to be both.

Three more stories:

  • Britain is appealing a ruling against its Legacy Act, which gives amnesty to ex-soldiers and militants involved in Northern Ireland’s “Troubles.” Victims’ families have challenged the law, and a Belfast court in February ruled it breached human rights. The Irish government is separately contesting the law before the European Court of Human Rights.
  • Rose Dugdale, who left a life of wealth to become a partisan activist fighting for Irish independence in the 1970s, died in Dublin, aged 82.
  • The Central Statistics Office launched the Women and Men in Ireland Hub, ” which features data from the CSO and other public sources broken down into six main themes: Gender Equality, Work, Education, Health, Safety & Security and Transport.

Best of the Blog, 2023

Welcome to my 11th annual Best of the Blog, a roundup of the year’s top work. I appreciate the support of my regular readers, especially email subscribers (Join at right.) and other visitors. This year’s site traffic surpassed 2022 on Dec. 1 and will finish second only to 2020, when COVID quarantine rocketed readership.

BPL reading room.

As aways, I also want to thank the archivists and librarians who assisted my research during the year. 2023 was split between Cambridge, Massachusetts, where my wife finished her Nieman Fellowship, and our return to Washington, D.C. In New England I visited collections at Harvard University, Boston College, Boston Public Library, Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Colby College in Waterville, Maine. In DC I have made numerous trips to the Library of Congress. The New York Public Library and Kings College London provided remote help with digital scans of requested material. I am always grateful for the easy access to historic newspaper archives provided by Newspapers.com, the Irish Newspaper Archives, and other collections.  Finally, thanks to authors and publishers who have sent me their Irish-related books.

BACK TO IRELAND

In March I made my eleventh trip to Ireland, the first since before COVID. My wife and I were happy to see our relations in Kerry. We enjoyed St. Patrick’s Day in Kilkenny, which we visited for the first time. In November we flew into the Dublin airport enroute to Brussels and on our return to DC. I enjoyed the airborne views of Ireland but missed having a proper second visit. Hope to get back in 2024.

Dingle Peninsula, March 2023.

POPULAR POSTS

This year’s most viewed post explored the history behind an Academy Award-nominated movie:

Two other posts about contemporary events in Ireland also included historical background:

JOURNALISM HISTORY

I added a dozen posts to my American Reporting of Irish Independence series, which now totals more than 150 entries since December 2018. I continue to explore this topic as I work toward a book.

This year’s highlights included:

When a boatload of reporters steamed to the Easter Rising (1916)

Arthur Gleason’s ‘inside’ reporting of post-Rising Ireland (1916-17)

Reporter vs. reporter: Ackerman and Grasty in Ireland (1920/21)

Praying and ‘knocking heads together’ to end Irish Civil War (1923)

Killarney National Park, March 2023.

FREELANCE PIECES … 

… & GUEST POSTS

Journalists, historians, authors, researchers, and travelers to Ireland are welcome to offer submissions. Use the contact form on the Guest Posts landing page to make a suggestion.

Kilkenny Castle, March 2023.

YEARS PAST:

More great content in our “BOB” archive:

Biden’s sentimental Irish American trip to Ireland

U.S President Joe Biden’s four-day trip to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was an elegy or wake for sentimental Irish American views of Ireland, at least according to preliminary opinion coverage. This view was especially noticeable in The Irish Times, the once conservative but now liberal national daily.

“The 46th president is almost certainly the last great avatar of a specifically Irish-American culture that is now in terminal decline,” wrote columnist Hugh Linehan. The Irish aren’t nostalgic, he insisted, but Irish Americans are. Linehan continued:

From the mid-19th century onward, waves of migration to the big cities of the US northeast created a market for drama, stories and songs lamenting the misery of Irish exile and usually declaring a fervent desire to ‘be back in [insert evocative name of townland here]’. There was also a lot of talk about mothers. As the 19th century became the 20th, these melodramas, comedies and songs migrated from the stage to the screen and the radio Irish-Americanness became a clearly defined strand of US – and therefore global – pop culture. Along the way, it was beamed back to the mother country where it was received with a mixture of bemusement, amusement and a keen awareness that there might be a few bob to be made from it. The naïve returning Yank remains a recurring trope to this day.

Not to be outdone, Fintan O’Toole suggested, “Biden’s sense of Irishness is very real and profoundly felt. But it is rooted in soil that is now increasingly thin on the ground in Ireland itself: a complete fusion of Irish and Catholic identities. … In Irish-America, this parochial Catholic world can be recalled with a simple, uncomplicated fondness that is almost impossible now in Ireland itself. … Biden is here because he identifies passionately with a religious idea of Irishness that has lost much of its grip on the homeland.”

Comparing the June 1963 visit of President John F. Kennedy to Biden’s trip 60 years later, O’Toole continued, “This is a case of history repeating itself, the first time as a dream of the Irish future, the second as echo of an Irish past. JFK embodied, in all his impossible glamour, an idea of what Ireland then aspired to be: modern, sophisticated, confident. Biden now embodies an idea of what Ireland used to be — a place in which ‘Irish’ and ‘Catholic’ was a match made in heaven (and from which there could be no divorce).”

Finally, the Times‘ Gerard Howlin wrote, “Ireland today bears little relationship to the one imagined by Irish America. … There is something of the end of an era about the Biden visit. He is the last of the generation of Irish-American politicians who can remember the springtime Kennedy spoke of and who subsequently gave generously of their friendship.

President to president: Ireland’s Michael D. Higgins and Joe Biden.                       President of Ireland media library

Kevin Liptak and Phil Mattingly of CNN echoed this view in the American press: “The Ireland Biden visited is a distant cry from the place his ancestors left so long ago. It doesn’t even look much like the country John F. Kennedy – the last Irish Catholic president – toured in 1963.”

These suggestions that Irish Americans cling to outdated and overly romanticized views of Ireland is greatly exaggerated and has become a cliché. More than 900 American companies do business in Ireland, and 700 Irish firms have operations in the United States. Combined, they employ several hundred thousand Irish and American citizens in both countries. These people–and their families and friends–understand modern Ireland, as do most tourists.

Biden correctly noted that Kennedy’s trip “captur(ed) the imaginations of Irish and Irish American families alike.” But, he added, “For too long Ireland has been talked about in the past tense. … Today, Ireland’s story is no one’s to tell but its own.” He emphasized the contemporary partnership between the two nations.

Negative coverage

At the National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote that Biden seemed “not to know or care that, in Ireland, a public official admitting to some pride in Irish-Catholic identity would be an incident more infamous and unwelcome than a Loyalist bombing of a day-care center,” a grossly irresponsible statement from the conservative writer. Fox News and some Republican lawmakers jumped on Biden’s remark about “not going home” to the U.S., but “staying here” in Ireland. If only he would keep his word, they chortled, predictably.

Biden began the trip with a quick stop in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Some British press opinion pages and a few hardline Brexiteers and unionists criticized the president in much the same way as their right-wing brethren in America. In the most notorious example, former Northern Ireland Assembly First Minister Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party vomited that Biden “hates the U.K.,” in part because of his announced decision not to attend the coronation of King Charles III. Oh my!

Current DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson was more moderate in his comments. He welcomed Biden’s offer to support investment in Northern Ireland, without interfering in local political matters. Donaldson and the DUP have refused to participate in the power-sharing Assembly for a year due to objections to the way Brexit treats the province.

“In the estimation of British officials, Biden’s brief visit (to the North) accomplished what they had hoped, a quiet message with carefully chosen words that did not aggravate the dynamic and might eventually help lead to another restoration of government,” wrote Washington Post chief political correspondent Dan Balz. “Biden could point but not forcefully persuade. As always in Northern Ireland, it remains in the hands of the leaders and the people there to make the way forward.”

I’m interested to see how Biden’s Ireland trip is viewed in the coming weeks and months; whether the visuals are used in his anticipated re-election campaign; and if he returns to the island during a potential second term or post presidency. It will be just as interesting to see how, or whether, his visit is leveraged by Irish tourism and other commercial interests.

Biden to visit N. Ireland, address legislators in Republic

UPDATE:

Read the full text of Bident’s April 13 address to the joint session of the Irish legislature.

ORIGINAL POST:

Joe Biden is visiting Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The April 11-14 trip is pegged to the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement and Biden’s unabashed Irish heritage. He visited the Republic as vice president in 2016. I’ll report any extraordinary developments during the week; otherwise, I’ll wait until after the visit to write a follow up post. MH

On April 13 Biden is scheduled to become the fourth U.S president to address a joint sitting of Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann, lower and upper chambers, respectively, of the Republic’s legislature. Below are select excerpts from the speeches of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, with some background about their visits and remarks.

KENNEDY, June 28, 1963: Famously the first Catholic U.S. president, though not the first with Irish heritage, Kennedy visited Ireland three times before he won the presidency in 1960: in 1939 with his father, then U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain Joseph P. Kennedy; in 1945 after his service in World War II, when he interviewed Taoiseach Éamon de Valera for the New York Journal-American; and in 1955, as a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, when he met with T.D. Liam Cosgrave. Kennedy was assassinated five months after the historic 1960 trip, five years before the start of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

I am deeply honored to be your guest in a free parliament in a free Ireland. If this nation had achieved its present political and economic stature a century or so ago, my great grandfather might never have left New Ross (County Wexford), and I might, if fortunate, be sitting down there with you. Of course if your own president had never left Brooklyn, he might be standing up here instead of me. (Éamon de Valera was born in 1882 to an Irish mother and sent to Ireland two years later after his father died.) … I am proud to be the first American president to visit Ireland during his term of office, proud to be addressing this distinguished assembly, and proud of the welcome you have given me. … John Barry, whose statue we honored yesterday and whose sword is in my office, was only one who fought for liberty in America to set an example for liberty in Ireland. Yesterday was the 117th anniversary of the birth of Charles Stewart Parnell–whose grandfather fought under Barry and whose mother was born in America–and who, at the age of 34, was invited to address the American Congress on the cause of Irish freedom. “I have seen since I have been in this country,” he said, “so many tokens of the good wishes of the American people toward Ireland . . .” And today, 83 years later, I can say to you that I have seen in this country so many tokens of good wishes of the Irish people towards America. KENNEDY’S FULL SPEECH

JFK, standing at center right, at the Dáil in Dublin, June 1963.

REAGAN, June 4, 1984: Reagan’s visit to Ireland stirred wide protests against his hawkish foreign policies, including several Dáil members who walked out of his speech. His visit came about halfway through the 30-year Troubles. Reagan won a second term five months later.

I am the great-grandson of a Tipperary man; I’m the president of a country with the closest possible ties to Ireland; and I was a friend of Barry Fitzgerald. (William Joseph Shields, 1888-1961, known professionally as Barry Fitzgerald, was an Irish stage, film and television actor, like Reagan.) One Irishman told me he thought I would fit in. “”Mr. President,” he said, “”you love a good story, you love horses, you love politics — the accent we can work on.” …  The trouble in the north affects more than just these two great isles. When he was in America in March, your Prime Minister (Garret FitzGerald) courageously denounced the support that a tiny number of misguided Americans give to these terrorist groups. I joined him in that denunciation, as did the vast majority of Irish Americans. I repeat today, there is no place for the crude, cowardly violence of terrorism — not in Britain, not in Ireland, not in Northern Ireland. All sides should have one goal before them, and let us state it simply and directly: to end the violence, to end it completely, and to end it now. … The position of the United States in all of this is clear: We must not and will not interfere in Irish matters nor prescribe to you solutions or formulas. But I want you to know that we pledge to you our good will and support, and we’re with you as you work toward peace. (Reagan made two references to Kennedy.) REAGAN’s FULL SPEECH

CLINTON, Dec. 1, 1995: Clinton was the first U.S. president to visit Northern Ireland. His visit came just over a year after the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries declared ceasefires, which were subsequently broken and then renewed before the Good Friday Agreement was reached in April 1998. Clinton returned to Northern Ireland and the Republic in September 1998.

We live in a time of immense hope and immense possibility — a time captured, I believe, in the wonderful lines of your poet, Séamus Heaney, when he talked of, “the longed-for tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.” (Biden often quotes this line from Heaney’s poem, ‘The Cure at Troy.’) … Today, I have travelled from the North where I have seen the difference Ireland’s leadership has made for peace there. At the lighting of Belfast’s Christmas tree before tens of thousands of people, in the faces of two communities divided by bitter history we saw the radiance of optimism born especially among the young of both communities. In the voices of the (Protestant) Shankill and the (Catholic) Falls there was a harmony of new hope and I saw that the people want peace, and they will have it. George Bernard Shaw with his wonderful Irish love of irony said: “peace is not only better than war but infinitely more arduous. … In the prosperity and freedom of our nation we are grateful for what (Irish immigrants) did and for the deep ties to Ireland they gave us in their sons and daughters. Now we seek to repay that in some small way by being a partner with you for peace. We seek somehow to communicate to every person who lives here that we want for all of your children the right to grow up in an Ireland where this entire island gives every man and woman the right to live up to the fullest of their God-given abilities and gives people the right to live in equality, freedom and dignity. That is the tide of history. We must make sure that the tide runs strong here for no people deserve the brightest future more than the Irish. (Clinton made one reference to Kennedy.) CLINTON’S FULL SPEECH

Four other U.S. presidents have visited Ireland but did not address the Dáil: Richard Nixon, October 1970; George W. Bush, June 2004 and February 2006; Barack Obama, May 2011; and Donald Trump, June 2019. See 23 presidents with Irish heritage.

Headline: Good Friday Agreement reaches 25th anniversary

Most of my posts this month will be dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, the April 10, 1998, accord that largely ended 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Below are the next-day front pages of five U.S. dailies in cities with large Irish American populations. (Click images to see larger versions.) The agreement was approved the following month in referendums on both sides of the island’s partition. Watch for more posts through the month, including U.S. President Joe Biden’s anticipated trip to NI/Ireland. MH

N. Ireland trade tweak passed without DUP support

UPDATE:

The U.K. and E.U. March 24 have formally adopted a new plan to ease post-Brexit trade tensions in Northern Ireland — despite ongoing objections from the region’s Democratic Unionist Party, Politico reports.

ORIGINAL POST:

Northern Ireland’s largest unionist party has further isolated itself by refusing to support a key provision of how Brexit impacts the region. The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has abstained from the power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly for more than a year because of its objections to the trade deal.

Special trade arrangements are necessary because Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland share the only land boarder impacted by Britain’s exit from the European Union.

Stormont, home of the Northern Ireland Assembly, and now a new trade “brake.”

Six DUP Members of Parliament (London) March 22 voted against the “Stormont brake,” designed to give the Assembly more leverage on how E.U. laws apply to Northern Ireland. The measure passed by 515-29, with a handful of Tory MPs also in opposition, notably former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss.

“We want to see the restoration of devolved government (the Assembly, also know as Stormont, after the legislative building in Belfast), but we’ve got to do it right,” said DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson.

An early March poll by the nationalist-leaning Irish News and the Institute of Irish Studies-University of Liverpool found 45 percent support for the framework, with about 17 percent opposed. Nearly 39 percent neither accepted or rejected the deal. Opposition within the DUP was nearly 23 percent, compared to 36 percent support and 41 percent neutral.

U.S. President Joe Biden, during St. Patrick’s Day remarks in Washington, D.C., called the framework “a vital step … that’s going to help ensure all the people in Northern Ireland have an opportunity to realize their full potential.”

The White House announced that Biden will visit Northern Ireland in the second half of April to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. It seems doubtful the Assembly will be reconstituted by then. Biden also will visit the Republic during the four-day trip.

(This post will be revised as necessary. Email subscribers should check the website for updates. MH)

U.S connections to Ireland remain strong

Irish Americans continue to embrace their heritage due to lasting interests in Irish history and culture, and positive perceptions of Irish identity in the United States, according to a new poll. The results are heartening considering that most Irish Americans are now several generations removed from their immigrant ancestors.

“The findings highlight an across-the-board belief that the best way to sustain this connection is to provide more opportunities for young Irish-Americans to study, volunteer and work in Ireland,” The Irish Times reports. That includes more support for Irish studies programs in U.S. colleges and universities, and immigration reform for Irish immigrants in America.

Other highlights include:

  • Given a list of what most attracts them to their Irish heritage, 33 percent selected Irish history, followed by 24 percent who picked Irish music. Travel in Ireland was 11 percent.
  • Nearly one third (31 percent) said peaceful reunification of Ireland is the most important issue for American politicians to address in relation to Ireland, followed by two-way trade investment at 29 percent. Only 6 percent picked support for the Good Friday Agreement.
  • Religious identity continues to decline: 47 percent said they were either Catholic or Raised Catholic, but only 12 are regularly attend Mass, while 15 percent said they were raised Catholic but no longer identify with the faith. Another 19 percent identified as Protestant, while 16 percent identify as non-religious, and 15 percent said other religions.

A sample of 736 Irish-Americans were interviewed in January by Change Research, and the results have a 3.8 percent margin of error. Glucksman Ireland House at New York University, and the Council for American Irish Relations commissioned the poll. See the full survey analysis, which coincides with the start of Irish-American Heritage Month and St. Patrick’s Day.

“Ireland and the United States are forever bound together by our people and our passion.  Everything between us runs deep,” President Joe Biden said in the annual heritage month proclamation, which dates to 1991. “In the years ahead, I look forward to strengthening the partnership between our countries and the friendship between our people even further.” Biden is expected to travel to Ireland later this year.

See these Irish-American heritage resources:

This post was revised March 7, 2023, to provide a link to the full survey. MH