King Charles has \u201cgraciously accepted\u201d an invitation to Ireland, President Catherine Connolly said yesterday following a meeting at Buckingham Palace.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly met the king as part of a three-day official visit to London and Leeds.<\/p>\n
At the meeting, she invited Charles to make a state visit to Ireland, in what would be the second such visit by a British monarch since independence.<\/p>\n
Charles\u2019s late mother Queen Elizabeth II paid a state visit to Ireland in 2011.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly described her meeting with Charles, which lasted just under an hour, as \u201cwonderful\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very positive, warm meeting and it was a privilege to meet with King Charles,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cKing Charles knows Ireland well and has been a positive voice for peace and reconciliation. <\/p>\n
“In our discussion, we were mindful of the unique relationship as close neighbours and our intertwined history.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe discussed many things, and actually, I had a lot in common with the king in relation to the environment and climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said the \u201chighlight\u201d of the meeting was the invitation she extended to him to visit Ireland, adding: \u201cThe details will emerge in due course between the two governments.\u201d<\/p>\n
The visit from Charles is unlikely to take place this year due to Ireland hosting the EU presidency from July.<\/p>\n
During her visit to London, Ms Connolly also addressed comments made by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern on migrants, saying politicians \u201chave to take responsibility for what they say\u201d.<\/p>\n
Asked about Mr Ahern\u2019s comments where he singled out people arriving to Ireland from \u201cthe Congo\u201d as well as \u201cthe next generation of Muslims\u201d, the President said there were \u201ctwo by-elections going on, and I will leave that to the politicians\u201d.<\/p>\n
However, she added: \u201cOn a general level, I think we all have to own our own words, particularly myself in my role, and other politicians, have to take responsibility for what they say.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Ahern is a statutory life member of the President\u2019s Council of State as a former taoiseach.<\/p>\n
Irish President Catherine Connolly shaking hands with the King (Jordan Pettitt\/PA)\u00a0<\/p>\n
Addressing a reception at the Irish embassy in London last night, Ms Connolly said that Ireland \u201cbrings to all of our relationships the values we hold dear given our history\u201d around neutrality and sovereignty.<\/p>\n
\u201cIreland champions those values by defending international law,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why Ireland speaks out in the face of injustice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is why we will not be silent when international law is treated as optional by those with the power to simply ignore it when they choose.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ending her address, Ms Connolly said the two countries need to \u201cuse our voices in a world, a volatile world, to say that normalising war is never acceptable, normalising slaughter is never acceptable\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cWe have to use our voices to reclaim our language, not just in the sense of reclaiming our Irish language and culture, but reclaiming our language so that language has meaning, and we can tell young people that we mean what we say.\u201d<\/p>\n
To be Irish in Britain in those years was to carry a weight that was not yours to carry<\/p>\n
The President was speaking just hours after her sister, Dr Margaret Connolly, was seized by Israeli forces as part of an aid flotilla headed for Gaza.<\/p>\n
She told the embassy gathering that for centuries the relationship between Ireland and Britain was \u201cone of coloniser and colonised\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decolonisation of Ireland, however, was not only about land and law. It was also about the decolonisation of our minds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
After struggling with a green\u2011tinted stage light and no glasses earlier in the day, she paused mid\u2011speech at the embassy, put on her spectacles and remarked, \u201cI have lost the battle\u201d.<\/p>\n
The President also spoke about the impact that Troubles\u2011era bombings in England had on the Irish communities living there at the time. \u201cMost of you and your families lived the consequences of the horrific bombings.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be Irish in Britain in those years was to carry a weight that was not yours to carry. People lost jobs. People were accused in the wrong,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said that the Good Friday Agreement provided peace for the island, which she called a \u201cliving, breathing framework\u201d, adding, it was \u201cunder pressure\u201d during Brexit but Ireland \u201cdefended it\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to do so. Not because it is politically convenient, but because the alternative is unthinkable,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The official visit began earlier yesterday, with a visit to the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith, west London, where she delivered an address and met those participating in an Irish language class.<\/p>\n
Ms Connolly told the audience that historically immigration was \u201cdriven by economic factors\u201d with large numbers of Irish arriving in \u201cwaves\u201d to London, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately today as well, we have people leaving our shores for various reasons, some of them for lack of housing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"King Charles has \u201cgraciously accepted\u201d an invitation to Ireland, President Catherine Connolly said yesterday following a meeting at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456077,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-456076","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\/456076","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=456076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456076\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}