A Fianna F\u00e1il MEP has responded to US President Donald Trump’s intervention in the united Ireland debate by saying: “Mr Trump has decided to get involved, what could possibly go wrong”.<\/p>\n
Barry Andrews made the comments during a European Parliament discussion in Strasbourg, France, this evening.<\/p>\n
Speaking during a one-minute speeches debate on a series of different topics in the parliament, Mr Andrews referenced Mr Trump’s comments about a united Ireland during his visit to the Irish Open at the weekend.<\/p>\n
The Fianna F\u00e1il MEP who has previously criticised the US president’s time in power, responded dryly, “Mr Trump has decided to get involved in the debate on a united Ireland, what could possibly go wrong? As [SDLP MP] Claire Hanna has said, he’s perhaps not as orange as he looks.”<\/p>\n
“People who take Ireland’s future seriously don’t take Trump’s comments seriously,” he added.<\/p>\n
Mr Andrews continued by referencing new British prime minister Andy Burnham’s recent comments that a united Ireland referendum is for now “off the table” as it is not believed by Downing Street that the majority of people currently want a referendum.<\/p>\n
While Mr Burnham has since moved to clarify his remarks, Mr Andrews said “it is not exaggeration to say the British government’s wisdom on what might pass in a referendum is at least patchy”.<\/p>\n
He added that the Brexit referendum fallout has shown that it is important not just to plan for a potential future united Ireland referendum, but for the potential aftermath of any vote result as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Fianna F\u00e1il MEP has responded to US President Donald Trump’s intervention in the united Ireland debate by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":625078,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-625077","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\/625077","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=625077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/625077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/625078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=625077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=625077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=625077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}