He said there was a need to continue engagement with the US administration to protect jobs in Ireland as well as trade between the two countries, adding: “It is very important because, first of all, the economic relationship between Europe and the US and between Ireland and the US is an extremely important one, very robust one.”.
Speaking on Friday, Ms McDonald said: “I followed with growing concern what’s happening on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank and, like many other Irish people, have listened in horror to calls from the president of the United States for the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from their homes and the permanent seizure of Palestinian lands.”.
Speaking at the press conference in Dublin, the First Minister said: “We are all heartbroken whenever we witness the suffering of the Palestinian people, and the recent comments by the US president around the mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza is just simply something that I cannot ignore.”.
Sinn Fein was also challenged on how it believed it was right for the Taoiseach, as Ireland’s head of government, to go to the White House while Ms O’Neill, as joint leader of Northern Ireland’s devolved government, should boycott the St Patrick’s Day events.
The party’s leadership, which normally travels to the US to mark the occasion every year, said it would not participate as part of “a principled stance against the threat of mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza”.
