Biden visit – latest: US president wraps up Ireland tour after tearful meeting with priest

Former Taoiseach and Co Mayo native Enda Kenny has said he hopes Joe Biden receives an “almighty welcome” when he arrives in Ballina, the town where some of his ancestors are from.

“Of all the American presidents that I’ve seen and met, he has ... the most active Irishness of them all,” Mr Kenny told RTE. “A man deeply proud of his faith, deeply proud of his heritage, and has paid tribute to that during his visit here.

“And I hope that, as a Mayo man myself, that by the time he gets to the Moy river and St Muredach’s Cathedral in Ballina this evening, that they will give him one almighty welcome.”

Joe Biden’s visit is historic because it is “one of endless opportunity”, former Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

“This is the longest presidential visit to the island of Ireland ever. I think this is a historic occasion,” Mr Kenny told RTE.

“I hope the president enjoys his private visit to Knock where Monsignor Gibbons will show him around, where he will visit the Mayo Roscommon hospice, for which he turned the sod when he was vice president – and will enjoy his welcome home to Ballina.”

Consideration of Ireland’s international security policy should not by a binary choice on whether it joins a military alliance, deputy prime minister Micheal Martin has said.

In his speech to parliament, Mr Biden highlighted a quote by his predecessor John F Kennedy 60 years ago when he stated that Ireland has never been neutral “between liberty and tyranny”, adding that “over the past year Ireland has proved him right”.

Describing Mr Biden as “very taken” by Ireland’s humanitarian response to the Ukraine war, Mr Martin told RTE: “As he said himself are we are not militarily aligned, but we’re not politically neutral.”

He added: “That value system that the President spoke about is exactly where Ireland is in terms of values around democracy, freedom of the individual, the dignity of the individual and human rights and all of that and in terms of our work in Africa together, and in terms of food hunger,” he said.

“But there are broad threads coming our way, in terms of cybersecurity, hybrid warfare, and we have to be intelligent about that and we have to work in partnership, as we will be, and I think it’s important that we have a national conversation about that, in terms of the future threats and challenges to this country, and how do we respond to that?

“Are we equipped for that, and how do we manifest our independent foreign policy into the future? We wish to avoid a binary issue. It’s not just about whether you join a military alliance or not. It’s much broader than that.

“And I think most people in the international community are far more tolerant of our position than we might think ourselves, or some people might think here, and I think that’s the context for the national conversation.”

Joe Biden’s remarks that the UK should work more closely with Ireland to support the people of Northern Ireland was an exhortation for everyone to co-operate, Ireland’s deputy premier has said.

Michael Martin also said that be believed a speech by the president in Belfast earlier in the week could potentially help the political atmosphere in Northern Ireland, where powersharing institutions are currently suspended.

Asked about the comments on the RTE Morning Ireland programme, Mr Martin said: “I take that as a general exhortation to all of us to work together. I am pleased with Prime Minister Sunak, Chris Heaton-Harris, there is a closer engagement already over the last while, that could get closer.

“I think the context was clear from the president, he was speaking in the context of all of us. He mentions the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Ireland.”

The Tanaiste added: “The Good Friday Agreement really depends on the very close relationship between the British Government and the Irish Government. That is the anchor to the peace, the anchor to future relationships.”

Irish broadcaster RTE has been speaking to locals in Knock, where Joe Biden is soon set to visit.

“We’re all excited,” said one resident, adding that the “magical” event reminded her of when the pope visited in 2018.

The US president will visit the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Knock, a Catholic pilgrimage site which has been visited by several popes.

Thursday’s editorial in The Independent notes that, while no more malicious than any other member of the Irish diaspora getting sentimental about their roots, Joe Biden’s well-known affection for the old country has evidently riled some senior figures in the Democratic Unionist Party. It states:

The former leader Arlene, now Baroness, Foster declared that Mr Biden “hates the UK”; while the splenetic Sammy Wilson claims that the president is anti-British. Their party leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, has refrained from endorsing his colleagues’ unnuanced analyses, wisely. No good comes from insulting the leader of the world’s only superpower.

The DUP hotheads are unfair on Mr Biden. No other conflict in the world, with the exception of Israel-Palestine, has attracted such attention from successive American presidents as The Troubles.

President Clinton, and especially his personal envoy Senator George Mitchell, was instrumental in securing the paramilitaries’ ceasefire and subsequent peace agreement. As Mr Biden recalled in Belfast, it was his fellow senator who told him that the Good Friday Agreement arrived after 7,000 days of failure and one day of success. It took most of the 1990s for the process begun by John Major and then Taoiseach Albert Reynolds to result in the Good Friday Agreement, and some years more before it became more stable and established. The high point was the unlikely but highly successful partnership between Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness: two men who carried such prestige that they could never be accused of “selling out”. When their time eventually passed, they left a vacuum which is yet to be filled.

It was local leaders who turned the Good Friday Agreement into the reality of everyday governance and a guarantee of peace. It is a lack of local leadership that is now undermining the agreement. Mr Biden cannot make power-sharing work; he can remind the parties that America will support them. That is exactly what he came to do. He did not come to broker a new political settlement.

Here are some images from County Mayo today ahead of Joe Biden’s arrival:

In Ireland this week, well-wishers have lined the streets to catch a mere glimpse of Joe Biden. Photos of his smiling face are plastered on shop windows, with one admirer holding a sign reading: “2024 - Make Joe President Again.”

No wonder Biden keeps joking about sticking around. Read the full report:

Joe Biden will later address a crowd in Ballina in front of St Muredach’s Cathedral, where his great-great-great grandfather once earned money which helped him emigrate to America in 1851.

Ahead of the visit the town was being decorated with US flags, bunting and cardboard cutouts of Biden peering out of windows, with a mural overlooking the local school.

“This is massive for the town,” said pub owner Michael Carr, 52, who compared the impact on future tourism to that of actor John Wayne’s visit to the fellow County Mayo town of Cong in 1951 to shoot The Quiet Man.

“This is going to last for 40 years.”

Joe Biden has left Dublin for Co Mayo.

Presidential visits come with the pageantry of Air Force One landings, long motorcades and “the beast,” Biden‘s limo, which other world leaders, like Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, delight in riding.

“He can feel the love in a way that’s hard to do at home,” presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said.

“There’s something about an American president being in your country that makes a nation’s press and public go gaga.”