The Minister for Foreign Affairs has said she believes that the Taoiseach’s visit to the White House for St Patrick’s Day should go ahead, describing the US as an important trading partner.
Helen McEntee said that the Taoiseach’s visit to the White House was “an opportunity for access that many countries don’t have” and one that “our European colleagues value and want us to continue”.
Earlier this week, some Opposition parties called for a boycott of the traditional visit.
Minister of State Neale Richmond told the Dáil that nine or ten ministers will visit up to 15 US states around St Patrick’s Day.
Ms McEntee was speaking ahead of the Government Trade Forum, which she is chairing.
The forum is meeting for the tenth time since it was established last year and will discuss the action plan for market diversification and trade promotion.
It comes after a week of uncertainty in the trading relationship between the US and the EU, which culminated in US President Donald Trump withdrawing a threat of tariffs against the UK and other European allies over his ambitions for territory in Greenland – with the US citing a favourable deal with NATO for its decision.
Ms McEntee welcomed confirmation that Mr Trump was not going to move forward with increased tariffs on EU goods but these were “uncertain times”.
She said the EU’s approach in dealing with the threat from the US over Greenland “was the right approach… to engage, to negotiate, to engage in constructive dialogue but to be firm in our beliefs and to be firm in pushing back”.
The minister said that Ireland’s relationship with the US remains “one of our most important relationships” and after the EU it was our most important trading partner.
However, she said that Ireland had to diversify its markets and “control the controllables” and that was would be discussed at this morning’s trade forum.
“We’ve developed a market diversification strategy, which was agreed by Government just last year, a new competitiveness strategy as well, and then of course, our trips on St Patrick’s Day will feed into that, and this is with the objective of looking beyond,” she said.