“I am very, very conscious that, in a very challenging world, thousands and thousands of jobs depend on the economic relationship between the United States and Ireland and my overriding objective is to copper-fasten for the time ahead,” Taoiseach Micheál Martin said on a bright Monday morning in Austin.
So began the opening phase of a St Patrick’s week ceremony which has, in recent weeks, acquired a level of gravity and trepidation more akin to the Yalta Conference than the traditional St Patrick’s ceremonial sitdown in the Oval Office.
Mr Martin’s intention was clear and if he is feeling the pressure of what will be his first meeting with President Trump, he disguised it well. Over the course of the next five days, this State visit might fall under the heading of “bringing it all back home”. The Taoiseach visited the headquarters of Dell and Tricentis, two leading Austin-based multinationals on Monday morning before meeting with the governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, on Monday afternoon.
“I am taking this day by day,” he said when asked about his meeting with Mr Trump.
[ Ireland is more exposed to Trump’s tariff war than any other European countryOpens in new window ]
“This is a very important day, in terms of our visit in Austin. Our strategy is – not withstanding all the commentary and so on – to bring home that this is an enduring, robust presence in Ireland and the relationship is a very strong one that we want to see grow into the future. But I am looking forward to the meeting in the White House, obviously, but we will have plenty of time to discuss that later in the week.
“I don’t want to reflect on my friends in my media. But I understand I am getting a lot of advice,” Mr Martin said.
“I was flying for a lot of it yesterday. But, look, I will take it as I would take any other meeting. We respect the president, of course, and the mandate he has, and we look forward to that engagement.”
[ Micheál Martin goes into the lion’s den as he heads for Trump’s Oval OfficeOpens in new window ]
He declined to elaborate on the likely talking points of Wednesday’s meeting. The potentially acrimonious issues of tariffs and Ireland’s stated position on Gaza, which featured prominently during then-taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s meeting with president Biden a year ago, could well define the success of the engagement. But Mr Trump offered warm words about Irish-America in signing a recent executive order marking March as a heritage month for that demographic and Mr Martin emphasised the strength of the relationship between the countries.
“It is a meeting, primarily, in the tradition of celebrating the Irish American diaspora in the US. It is a huge relationship. And then the economic relationship between the two countries. We will be really bringing home the message that Ireland has been good for American investment in Ireland, that Ireland has added value to the US companies located in Ireland. There will be a to and fro, no doubt, on various issues as there is every year, but we will do it in a good way.”
Mr Martin departs for Washington on Tuesday afternoon following a busy series of engagements in Austin, where the SXSW festival is taking place – he himself was due to take part in an open interview in the festival’s main conference hall on Monday afternoon.
“This is a very strong emerging economic relationship between here and Ireland, in particular with a new wave of Irish investment in the state – 120 Irish companies creating about 4,000 jobs,” he said.
