Ireland's lavish welcome for Biden on first trip 'home' as US leader

Ireland prepares a lavish welcome for Joe Biden ahead of his first trip ‘home’ as US president after joining Rishi Sunak in Belfast for the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement – as UK minister warns peace remains ‘fragile’

Ireland is preparing a lavish welcome for Joe Biden ahead of the US president’s first visit to the country as US president as he prepares to cross the Atlantic to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.

The American leader, who is intensely proud of his Irish heritage and the US’s role in the peace accord, will visit his ancestors’ home town of Ballina in Mayo later this week.

And the locals are already preparing the down to receiving him, with decorations already in place. 

But it will come after he take part in a series of engagements in Belfast including a formal meeting with the Prime Minister – amid warnings over the peace that the GFA achieved.

The commemorations come amid a heightened terror threat in Northern Ireland, which power-sharing in Stormont remaining collapsed amid post-Brexit tensions. 

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said the threat from dissident republicans was ‘a stark reminder of the fragility of peace’, and urged the Democratic Unionist Party to get back into Government.

The American leader, who is intensely proud of his Irish heritage and the US’s role in the peace accord, will visit his ancestors’ home town of Ballina (bar owner Michael Carr pictured) in Mayo later this week.

But it will come after he take part in a series of engagements in Belfast including a formal meeting with the Prime Minister – amid warnings over the peace that the GFA achieved.

 

Mr Biden will leave Northern Ireland on Wednesday for the Republic, where he will visit Dublin, Co Louth and Co Mayo.

Joe Biden;s fifth cousin Councillor Andrea McKevitt, outside Fitzpatrick’s bar and restaurant in Jenkinstown, Co Louth, where then vice-president met locals during his visit in 2016

Derek Furlong poses in the window of his Ballina photo centre, as he and others dress up their business properties in the town centre

Mr Sunak will meet the US president off Air Force One when he arrives on Tuesday evening. Mr Biden will leave Northern Ireland on Wednesday for the Republic, where he will visit Dublin, Co Louth and Co Mayo.

In a statement, the PM said the signing of the Good Friday Agreement was an ‘incredible moment’ in the history of the UK.

‘It was a powerfully rare example of people doing the previously unthinkable to create a better future for Northern Ireland,’ he said.

‘It is that promise of a better future that we offered to everyone in Northern Ireland that I will be thinking of first and foremost over the coming days.

‘It is my responsibility as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom to ensure we are making good on that promise.’

Signed on April 10 1998, the Good Friday Agreement ended the 30-year conflict of the Troubles, during which more than 3,500 people were killed. 

Mr Sunak said he is ‘relentlessly focused’ on delivering economic growth for Northern Ireland, which he said is crucial to improving living standards.

He is expected to use Mr Biden’s visit to drum up long-term investment for the nation, and announce that the UK will host a Northern Ireland Investment Summit in September.

The Prime Minister will address the ‘Agreement 25’ conference at Queen’s University on Wednesday before hosting a gala dinner.

A major policing operation costing around £7 million and backed up by around 300 officers travelling from other parts of the UK will be under way around the anniversary.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has warned of the potential of dissident republicans launching attacks on police officers in Londonderry on Easter Monday.

MI5 recently raised the terrorism threat in Northern Ireland level to severe, meaning an attack is highly likely.

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has insisted the political vacuum in the nation caused by his party’s refusal to re-enter Stormont is not to blame.

In February last year the DUP withdrew its support for the powersharing institutions formed by the Good Friday Agreement as it protests against post-Brexit trading arrangements.

Signed on April 10 1998, the Good Friday Agreement ended the 30-year conflict of the Troubles, during which more than 3,500 people were killed.

Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris said the threat from dissident republicans was ‘a stark reminder of the fragility of peace’, and urged the Democratic Unionist Party to get back into Government.

Heaton-Harris said no-one could put a timeline on when powersharing would be back up and running.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Westminster Hour: ‘Anybody who is predicting a date by which the executive would go back in Northern Ireland would be someone who can also sell you a four-leaf clover. No one knows – deadlines are deadly in Northern Ireland term.’

Writing in The Telegraph, he added: ‘Across a range of measures, the people of Northern Ireland are being directly impacted because of an ongoing lack of locally accountable devolved government.

‘The UK Government wants to see the Northern Ireland institutions delivering better public services, more investment and a stronger Union based on prosperity… there is no surer way to achieve that than for political parties to come together to get on with the job of delivering on the people’s priorities and to make Northern Ireland work.’

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