President Catherine Connolly will begin an official visit to Britain later today where she is due to meet with a number of Irish community groups in London and Leeds.<\/p>\n
It is also expected that President Connolly will meet with Britain’s King Charles.<\/p>\n
This is President Connolly’s second overseas visit and first trip to Britain since taking office last November.<\/p>\n
The three-day visit begins later this morning in London at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.<\/p>\n
President Connolly is due to meet local community groups and speak about the links between the two countries and the diaspora’s contribution to Britain.<\/p>\n
There will also be a reception at the Irish embassy in London, where the President and her husband, Brian McEnrery, will be guests of honour.<\/p>\n
A wide range of representatives of the Irish community are expected to attend.<\/p>\n
It is understood that President Connolly will also meet Charles at Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n
This is an official visit, not as formal as a State visit.<\/p>\n
Amid all the current political flux in Britain, meeting the Irish diaspora here is said to be a key focus of the trip.<\/p>\n
Officials have pointed out that the President had committed to engage with Irish communities abroad in her inauguration speech last year.<\/p>\n
Later in the week, President Connolly will travel to the north of England to visit Leeds University and the city’s Irish centres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Catherine Connolly will begin an official visit to Britain later today where she is due to meet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-454362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454362","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=454362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}