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Michael Noonan meeting Donald Trump in May Niall Carson/PA
MacGill
'If I was Minister for Finance I would meet Donald Trump - but not on his terms'
Michael Noonan’s rendezvous with ‘The Donald’ in May was criticised at MacGill this afternoon.
PROVIDING “A SPECIAL welcome” for Donald Trump is “indicative of where our priorities lie”, Lucinda Creighton told the MacGill Summer School this afternoon.
The Reform Alliance TD was speaking about Finance Minister Michael Noonan’s meeting with the US billionaire at Shannon airport in May.
Trump arrived on his own private jet to announce plans for the redevelopment of Doonbeg golf course in Clare.
Noonan came in for criticism at the time but defended the move saying that he would meet anyone bringing hundreds of jobs to the region.
Creighton said this morning that “an obsessive dependence on foreign direct investment” is akin to “repeating the mistakes of the past”.
Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty went a step further, saying that Noonan’s meeting with Trump was “just wrong” and “cringeworthy”.
“It was an embarrassment and its goes back to the mentality that a lot of our political leaders don’t have the courage to stand on their own two feet,” he said. “They feel an inferiority complex. “
He added that if he was Minister for Finance, he would meet Donald Trump “but not on his terms”.
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