{"id":287025,"date":"2026-02-08T08:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-08T08:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287025\/"},"modified":"2026-02-08T08:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-08T08:58:12","slug":"sensitivities-on-show-during-presidents-ni-visit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/287025\/","title":{"rendered":"Sensitivities on show during President’s NI visit"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the gothic splendour of Derry’s Guildhall, the tables of invited guests had been laid out in a horseshoe.<\/p>\n

President Catherine Connolly made her around the room in an anticlockwise direction.<\/p>\n

It meant DUP MP Gregory Campbell was at the last table.<\/p>\n

It took the President at least half an hour to get to him.<\/p>\n

By then he had had ample time to digest her earlier speech and work out what he wanted to say.<\/p>\n

Their interaction lasted more than two minutes.<\/p>\n

I watched it at close range. It was calm and considered. But Mr Campbell left the President in no doubt where he stood.<\/p>\n

\"Catherine
\nGregory Campbell told President Connolly she had come to ‘our country’<\/p>\n

He criticised her for using the name Derry throughout her address, with no reference to Londonderry – the city\u2019s title of choice for unionist politicians.<\/p>\n

And he raised the experience of the people of the Fountain Estate, the small Protestant enclave on the west bank of the Foyle – the same side as the city centre \u2013 which is overwhelmingly nationalist.<\/p>\n

He told President Connolly she had come to “our country” and that later he would be going to “your country”<\/a> – a reference to his planned participation in a debate on Irish unity at UCD in Dublin that night.<\/p>\n

They agreed there should be no attempt to rewrite history to suit a particular narrative and that there would be areas where they would disagree.<\/p>\n

President Connolly said as one of a family of 14 there had been lots of disagreements growing up; the important thing was to learn to “live and love”.<\/p>\n

She apologised for using “Derry” throughout her speech and there was a lengthy handshake before they parted.<\/p>\n

\"President
\nPresident Connolly delivering her address at the Guildhall in Derry<\/p>\n

Mr Campbell\u2019s parting words to her were “nice to see you”.<\/p>\n

The exchange made headlines on both sides of the border.<\/p>\n

Critics said Mr Campbell had been disrespectful and playing to his base. He rejected that.<\/p>\n

The story ran into a second day, with Mr Campbell invited onto radio stations to discuss what had happened.<\/a><\/p>\n

He did not resile from anything he had said. Anyone who knows Mr Campbell will not have been surprised by that.<\/p>\n

If nothing else, the episode was a salutary reminder that almost three decades after the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – which established peace and removed the Republic of Ireland\u2019s constitutional claim on Northern Ireland – complexities remain.<\/p>\n

\"President
\nPresident Catherine Connolly visited the Siege Museum during her trip<\/p>\n

President Connolly\u2019s trip to Northern Ireland fulfilled a promise made in her inauguration speech that it would be her first official visit of her presidency.<\/p>\n

The three-day programme would have been drawn up in conjunction with the Department of Foreign Affairs with a concentration on venues and groups with whom there had been a prior relationship.<\/p>\n

There was a delicate balance to achieve.<\/p>\n

Catherine Connolly is a new president, one who would not have been well-known to Northern politicians or community leaders prior to her election.<\/p>\n

For unionists there was the additional consideration that Sinn F\u00e9in had backed her presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

The sensitivities were on show, sometimes in what we saw, sometimes in what we did not see.<\/p>\n

On the President\u2019s arrival at Stormont Castle – the formal beginning of her visit, there was a warm embrace from Sinn F\u00e9in First Minister Michelle O\u2019Neill.<\/p>\n

But what felt like the offer of a hug seemed to be converted to a handshake by the DUP Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly.<\/p>\n

\"Deputy
\nDeputy First Minister Emma Little Pengelly and First Minister Michelle O’Neill greeting President Catherine Connolly at Stormont Castle<\/p>\n

Later that day former loyalist prisoners were among a group of people the President met in west Belfast, but the media had no access to that event.<\/p>\n

Any photographs came from her official photographer.<\/p>\n

It was the same the following day in Derry.<\/p>\n

President Connolly\u2019s visit to the Siege Museum – which tells the story of the 1689 defence of the city by 30,000 Protestants against the army of deposed Catholic King James II – was also a private affair.<\/p>\n

At the events which I attended, the President was well received.<\/p>\n

There was warmth towards a woman who seems most comfortable in informal gatherings.<\/p>\n

A trip highpoint was the footage of her shooting hoops with a cross-community basketball group, including one scored over her head, her back to the basket.<\/p>\n

\n

On more than one occasion she said she had come to listen and to learn from people\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n

Community worker Jeannette Warke was also in Derry\u2019s Guildhall as an invited guest.<\/p>\n

She is all about building up the Fountain Estate, working cross community, helping the 400 or so families which call it home, both those whose roots go back generations and new ethnic minority families.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nThe Fountain Estate is a small Protestant enclave on the west bank of the Foyle<\/p>\n

Her projects are funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs, money she is very glad of.<\/p>\n

She also is supported by The Honourable The Irish Society, an organisation which has links to a royal body established in the early 1600s to facilitate the Plantation of Ulster.<\/p>\n

Jeannette uses Derry and Londonderry interchangeably to refer to the city.<\/p>\n

She has previously visited \u00c1ras an Uachtar\u00e1in and met Mary McAleese.<\/p>\n

She found President Connolly to be “lovely”, is delighted there is another woman in the \u00c1ras and told the her she hoped they could continue the relationship.<\/p>\n

The one thing Jeanette would have liked to have heard during the President\u2019s address in the Guildhall was a reference to the suffering of both communities in Derry.<\/p>\n

\"eanette
\nCommunity worker Jeannette Warke<\/p>\n

President Connolly spoke about Bloody Sunday and the shooting dead of 13 unarmed civil rights demonstrators by the British army in 1972.<\/p>\n

She later met the families and spoke about how justice was still “awaited”.<\/p>\n

In the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, Jeanette and other Protestant people had to leave their homes, forced out as the violence escalated and community relations plummeted.<\/p>\n

Overnight her life changed. Where before she had “owned a house with a wee mortgage” now she was “paying a massive rent” in a place she did not know.<\/p>\n

She is working on a community project with others who experienced the same fate. It is called “The Exodus”.<\/p>\n

\"President
\nCatherine Connolly’s visit to Northern Ireland has gone down as a successful first outing<\/p>\n

She would like President Connolly to meet that group so they can share their story too.<\/p>\n

This was a get to know you visit. An opportunity for people to get the measure of Ireland’s new First Citizen.<\/p>\n

She will be back and future visits will build on what has gone down as a successful first outing.<\/p>\n

In an address at the Ulster University, President Connolly talked about people\u2019s different perspectives and aspirations for the future.<\/p>\n

She said she wanted to play her part in deepening relationships, how there was much to learn from other traditions.<\/p>\n

“We did not live separate histories, sealed off from one another,” she said. “We live, and are living, an intertwined and unfinished story.”<\/p>\n

Those words were spoken on the Wednesday, the first day of her visit.<\/p>\n

By the time she left Derry on Friday she had an even better sense of that unfinished story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the gothic splendour of Derry’s Guildhall, the tables of invited guests had been laid out in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":287026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-287025","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287025","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=287025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/287026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}