WASHINGTON (OSV News) — President Donald Trump backed Irish unification during a meeting Sept. 12 with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin in Dublin, a move that drew praise from a U.S. Irish Catholic fraternal organization, but bucked several decades of precedent for the U.S.’s officially neutral position on the question.
Historic Divide Continues to Shape Debate Over Irish Unity
Northern Ireland has been part of the United Kingdom since 1921, after the Government of Ireland Act 1920 divided the island into two parts amid the 1919-1921 Irish War of Independence. Divisions became hardened after the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty led to Southern Ireland becoming the majority-Catholic Irish Free State, while Northern Ireland, with its unionist Protestant majority and nationalist Catholic minority, remained in the United Kingdom.
While the U.S. has long held an officially neutral position on the question of unification, it has supported the Good Friday Agreement — the historic 1998 accord that the Clinton administration helped broker — that effectively ended three decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, often referred to as “the Troubles.”
Trump Says He Would ‘Love to See’ a Unified Ireland
“Well I don’t want to cause any problems, but I will tell you, I’d love to see it unified,” Trump told reporters in response to a question on the matter, which he acknowledged was sensitive. “I think it would be great, a great feather in everybody’s cap if that happens. It’s going to happen eventually.”
Trump added the U.K. would likely “have something to say about” his comments.
Part of the Good Friday Agreement stated that Northern Ireland would remain part of the U.K. unless a majority of its people voted otherwise in a referendum. Trump’s comments came shortly after Andy Burnham, the recently installed British prime minister, said there was not enough public support for such a referendum, calling the concept “off the table.”
Some Irish and British officials criticized Trump’s comments. But Martin later told reporters that “some of the reaction is an overreaction” and that Trump often “takes a different sort of perspective on things.”
But Trump reiterated his position over the course of his visit, including to a golf club he owns in Doonbeg, Ireland.
“I’ve always loved the people of Ireland and it just seems to me that you have Northern Ireland and you have Ireland and it would seem to me that one of the naturals all time is put them together … many people agree,” Trump later told reporters.
Ancient Order of Hibernians Welcomes Trump’s Remarks
The Ancient Order of Hibernians, the oldest Irish Catholic fraternal organization in the U.S., celebrated Trump’s comments, calling them “welcome.”
In a statement posted to social media, Sean Pender, the Hibernians’ national president and Neil F. Cosgrove, its political education chair, argued, “London should not be able to postpone indefinitely the democratic mechanism through which the people of Ireland can determine their future.”
“A border poll should be called when the conditions established by the Good Friday Agreement and the Northern Ireland Act are met, not when doing so is politically convenient for Whitehall,” they argued, referring to the bureaucratic offices of the British government in London. “Nor should the United States simply be dismissed as an outside voice with no legitimate interest in this discussion. American diplomacy was central to the peace process that produced the Good Friday Agreement, and successive administrations have remained engaged in defending that agreement and encouraging peace and prosperity in Northern Ireland.”
The Irish American Catholic organization called for “renewed American engagement” and for “the British Government to establish and publish a clear and transparent process for assessing when the statutory conditions for a border poll have been met.”
Kate Scanlon is a national reporter for OSV News covering Washington. Follow her on X @kgscanlon.
