After the Derry bombings, Joe Biden lands in Northern Ireland. The President of the United States will arrive in Belfast this evening at 9:30 pm (10:30 pm Italian time). British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will welcome him at the airport.
The US President will stay on the Emerald Island for four days. The occasion is the commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement which in 1998 put an end to the clashes between Catholic Republicans bent on Northern Ireland reunification in Dublin and faithful Protestant Unionists in London. Clashes erupted again on Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972 when British paratroopers fired into the crowd at a demonstration in Derry, opening a season of violence that left 1,600 dead. A wound in history someone tried to reopen on Easter Monday by throwing Molotov cocktails and burning police cars during a demonstration in Derry.
However, the new tensions did not change the program of Biden, who will be staying this evening in Belfast in a hotel in the historic city center, protected by three hundred policemen. Tomorrow morning he will attend the “Deal 25” conference at the University of Ulster and inaugurate the new campus. Then he will meet with local authorities and representatives of business associations. According to British newspapers, new US investments in Northern Ireland are expected to be announced. Also, UK Prime Minister Sunak should also announce interventions to support the economy in Ulster.
In the afternoon, Biden leaves for Dublin to meet with the President of the Republic of Ireland, Michael Higgins. He will then take part in a gala evening at Dublin Castle.
The head of the White House will meet Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Thursday and then address the Irish House of Representatives, as Ireland’s independent Gaelic parliament is called. The Representatives of the Dáil, the House of Representatives, and the Seanad, the Upper House, will meet in joint session. Thus, Joe Biden becomes the fourth president of the United States to address the House of Representatives, after John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1984, and Bill Clinton in 1995.
On April 14, the US President will visit his ancestral homelands, counties Louth and Mayo. With the famine of 1848, Biden’s maternal great-grandfather emigrated to America. In those years, a million people left Ireland, fleeing from hunger. So much so that today it is estimated that one in ten Americans has roots in the Emerald Isle. In Ballina, Joe Biden will deliver a public address outside St. Moridache Cathedral and return to the US for the evening.
No meeting with King Charles III was planned during the trip. Biden will not even go to the coronation of the new king on May 6 in London. No explanation was given for the absence. His wife, Jill Biden, will represent the White House. Instead, the US president was present at Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, on September 19, also in London.
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