{"id":258158,"date":"2026-01-22T15:22:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/258158\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T15:22:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T15:22:07","slug":"no-scenario-in-which-ireland-joins-trumps-board-of-peace-says-harris-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/258158\/","title":{"rendered":"No scenario in which Ireland joins Trump\u2019s \u2018Board of Peace\u2019, says Harris \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> has said he cannot see \u201cany scenario\u201d in which Ireland can participate in US president Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> so-called Board of Peace \u201cas currently constructed\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything that in any way seeks to undermine, replace or usurp the United Nations is not something that Government would support,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

But as Social Democrats<\/a> deputy leader Cian O\u2019Callaghan called on the Government to \u201ccategorically rule out\u201d joining the board, Mr Harris stressed the importance of \u201cprocess\u201d.<\/p>\n

Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin is to discuss the board at Thursday evening\u2019s emergency EU leaders\u2019 meeting, and it is important to allow the Government \u201cthe opportunity to sit down with our European colleagues, to discuss and tease through a European response to global issues\u201d, Mr Harris said, adding this is \u201ca prudent thing to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump is seeking $1 billion from countries for a permanent place on a board of peace aimed at resolving conflicts. The board was originally intended to oversee the rebuilding of Gaza, but the current iteration has broadened it out to global conflicts and does not reference Gaza.<\/p>\n

Raising the issue in the D\u00e1il, Mr O\u2019Callaghan said the board was \u201clittle to do with peace in Gaza and everything to do with destroying the UN and making the world less secure and safe\u201d. <\/p>\n

A number of European countries including Sweden, Norway, France, Slovenia and the UK have said they will not be signing up.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Callaghan asked: \u201cIs there any outrage perpetrated by Trump that your Government is willing to take a strong and principled stand on\u201d, as the Coalition had failed \u201cto rule out joining Trump\u2019s gang of war criminals\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Government\u2019s stated position is that it is considering joining the board. <\/p>\n

However, Mr Harris said there were \u201cvery serious red flags\u201d. <\/p>\n

Anything that Russian president Vladimir Putin is considering joining \u201cwith the word \u2018peace\u2019 in it doesn\u2019t sit well\u201d. There were also \u201cvery significant\u201d governance issues and anything that sought to undermine or usurp the UN could not be supported. <\/p>\n

The US president would be chairman of the board and would have power to designate his successor, appoint and remove board members. A government could pay the billion dollars and still be kicked off, Mr Harris pointed out.<\/p>\n

He added that no EU leader had attended the signing ceremony for the board in Davos, apart from Hungarian president Viktor Orban.<\/p>\n

Mr O\u2019Callaghan also questioned the T\u00e1naiste about the status of the Occupied Territories Bill and said Mr Harris had promised the legislation would be in the D\u00e1il by November last and it had yet to be introduced. <\/p>\n

He added that the Taoiseach in an RT\u00c9 interview on Sunday \u201cstrongly hinted that the Occupied Territories Bill was dead in the water\u201d and would not include services as part of the ban on goods produced in illegally occupied territories.<\/p>\n

Mr Harris said Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee received the Attorney General\u2019s advice just before Christmas and has submitted further questions to the Government\u2019s legal adviser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris has said he cannot see \u201cany scenario\u201d in which Ireland can participate in US president…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258159,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[128330,969,61,60,43,70],"class_list":{"0":"post-258158","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-cian-ocallaghan","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-simon-harris"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}