TAOISEACH SIMON HARRIS will travel to England today to meet with his newly elected counterpart Keir Starmer for the first time as nation leaders.

The two will meet in Chequers, the Buckinghamshire country house of the UK prime minister, where they will aim to continue the Fine Gael leader’s ambitions of “resetting” Anglo Irish relations following the defeat of the Tories.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Harris said that Starmer’s invite was a “strong signal of the value he attaches to the friendship and closeness” of both countries.

Harris and Starmer previously spoke by phone earlier this month where they agreed that UK Labour’s election success provided an opportunity for a “closer relationship” after relations were strained during Brexit.

It’s expected that the Taoiseach and Prime Minister will discuss Northern Ireland and international issues, including the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine.

The Gaza war in particular became an issue for Starmer’s party during the recent elections. Despite trouncing Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives, they lost a number of seats to independent candidates running on a pro-Palestinian platform.

Speaking ahead of the meeting the Taoiseach said that he would conveying to the new UK PM that there is a “broad” desire across Government and “more widely across Ireland to a reset in relations with the United Kingdom at this time”.

“The invitation extended to me by Prime Minister Starmer to meet with him at Chequers is a strong signal of the value he attaches to the friendship and closeness that saw our two countries achieve so much together in the past, and to resetting the relationship so that we can again achieve much together in the time ahead,” Harris said.

“I am fully committed to a stronger, mutually respectful and ambitious partnership between both countries, and to getting down to work to make this happen.”

Starmer has has pledged to repeal the controversial Legacy Act, which offers a limited form of immunity for perpetrators of Troubles crimes.

During his visit the Taoiseach will also participate at the European Political Community at Blenheim Palace on Thursday. The forum, which will be chaired by Starmer, is meeting for the fourth time having been set up in March last year.

It features over 50 countries among its membership and has major issues such as energy, cybersecurity and migration on its agenda.

Meanwhile, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald said Harris must use the meeting as an opportunity to “press the case” for a public inquiry into murder of Pat Finucane. 

Finucane, a lawyer who represented republican and loyalist paramilitaries during the Troubles, was shot dead in his family home in north Belfast in February 1989 by the Ulster Defence Association in an attack found to have involved collusion with the state.

McDonald said that in 2019, the Supreme Court in London declared that previous investigations commissioned by British governments into Finucane’s murder “failed to meet the standards required by Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

While McDonald said the Finucane family has received strong support” from the Irish Government during their “dignified campaign for truth and justice”, she added that the British government “has not adequately or sufficiently responded to that 2019 Supreme Court judgment”.

“In the latest case last week, the Court of Appeal set out a timetable for action, requiring the British government to respond within three weeks and agree to an Article 2 compliant investigation into Pat Finucane’s murder,” said McDonald.

McDonald added that she has written to Harris to “urge him to raise the matter directly” with Starmer when they meet today and to “urgently press the case for a public inquiry to be held which is long overdue and decision time draws near”.