{"id":622427,"date":"2026-09-12T12:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T12:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622427\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T12:30:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T12:30:10","slug":"donald-trump-says-united-ireland-would-be-a-great-thing-as-he-visits-country-follow-live","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/622427\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump says united Ireland would be a ‘great thing’ as he visits country – follow live"},"content":{"rendered":"

The context behind Trump’s united Ireland commentspublished at 11:48 BST<\/p>\n

11:48 BST<\/p>\n

\"\"Katie Williams
Live reporter<\/p>\n

Let’s take a closer look at the history of the island of Ireland, following Trump’s earlier comments that he would be in favour of Irish unification.<\/p>\n

There are two parts to the island – the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. <\/p>\n

Northern Ireland officially came into existence in 1921<\/a> when the partition of the island of Ireland took legal effect.<\/p>\n

It followed decades of turmoil between nationalists, who wanted independence from British rule, and unionists, who wanted to remain in the United Kingdom. <\/p>\n

Partition was viewed by the British government as a compromise solution, with the border dividing the 32-county island into two separate jurisdictions – the six-county Northern Ireland, which remained in the UK; and the Irish Free State, which is now the Republic of Ireland.<\/p>\n

Northern Ireland’s status – whether it should be part of the UK or reunified with the rest of the island – was at the forefront of the 30-year conflict known as the Troubles.<\/p>\n

The Troubles ended with the 1998 Good Friday Agreement – which makes provision for a border poll on Northern Ireland’s constitutional future, which can be called by the UK government’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland.<\/p>\n

The agreement says the secretary of state must hold a border poll if it appears likely that a majority of people in Northern Ireland would vote for Irish unification – and the circumstances of when that could happen is the subject of constant debate in Northern Ireland and the Republic. <\/p>\n

Two days ago, Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin said there needed to be more clarity on when a border poll can be called<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The context behind Trump’s united Ireland commentspublished at 11:48 BST 11:48 BST Katie WilliamsLive reporter Let’s take a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-622427","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\/622427","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=622427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}