President Michael D Higgins has congratulated US president-elect Donald Trump on his re-election to the White House.
President Higgins said Mr Trump’s re-election comes at a time when Ireland and the United States are celebrating 100 years of diplomacy, and almost one-in-10 people in the US – 32 million in all – can claim Irish heritage.
“As we begin the next century of diplomatic relations between our two countries, we will continue to build our relationship on the solid and mutually beneficial ground that our people have nurtured for the last 100 years,” the president wrote to Mr Trump.
He went on to praise the role of the United States in ensuring peace in Northern Ireland.
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“These valued relationships are manifested both in the breath and depth of our connections on so many levels, as well as in our extensive economic and cultural partnerships,” he wrote.
“In the political sphere, the enduring, bipartisan commitment of the United States to peace on the island of Ireland played a key role in delivering the Good Friday Agreement.”
The president identified food security, climate change and multiple international conflicts as the pressing issues of our time.
“I believe that achieving peace, ending global hunger and having an effective multilateralism are the central challenges of our time, the solutions for which are so vital now and to which Ireland is committed.
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“I wish you well as you prepare to return to the role of President of the United States of America.”
In 2019, in advance of a visit by Donald Trump to Ireland, President Michael D Higgins criticised the then US president’s record on climate change as “regressive and pernicious”.
Mr Higgins said at the time that the US should be urged to reverse its decision to withdraw from the international 2015 Paris accord, which sets targets for countries to reduce emissions in order to lessen the impact of global warming.
“While the EU has a set of binding emissions targets for 2020 and 2030, we must now plan for full decarbonisation of our European economies by 2050, encouraging the rest of the world to follow suit, and urging in the strongest possible terms the USA to reconsider its regressive and pernicious decision to leave the global Paris Agreement,” he said.
In July a letter of congratulations from Mr Higgins to Iran’s new president Masoud Pezeshkian caused a backlash online and drew criticism from the Israeli embassy as well as several Government TDs, who said he should not have sent the correspondence due to Tehran’s human rights record.
Speaking privately at the time, former diplomats said the Iranian letter appeared to be in line with standard letters of congratulation sent by the President to incoming heads of state.
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