LAST UPDATE | 14 hrs ago

US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump will pay a visit to the Áras when he arrives in Ireland on Saturday week. 

While preparations for Trump’s visit have been in train for weeks, until now it’s been unclear whether a meeting between Trump and President Catherine Connolly would take place. 

What’s been described as a “courtesy visit” will take place at Áras an Uachtaráin on the morning of Saturday 12 September, sources said. 

No timings have been confirmed as yet. 

Trump will spend just under 48 hours in Ireland, and it’s expected he’ll also meet with Taoiseach Micheál Martin as well as turning the sod at the planned new US embassy building at the site of the old Jury’s hotel in Ballsbridge. 

Asked about the visit today, Martin said he didn’t want to “jump ahead” because it is all dependent on Trump’s schedule.

“I’ve made it very clear from the very, very beginning that the relationship between Ireland and America is an extremely important one, and which affects the livelihoods of many, many people across the length and breadth of our country in a very real and substantive way.

“The democratically elected leader of the United States is President Trump, and as the democratically elected Taoiseach, I think it’s important that we do meet…with a view to trying to develop stronger multilateralism, stronger engagement, and trying to benefit our citizens as best we can,” the Taoiseach said.

The Irish Open is taking place at Trump’s golf course and resort in Doonbeg, Co Clare from 10 to 13 September, and he’s expected to travel there on Saturday afternoon before leaving early on the Monday. 

Trump did not visit Dublin on his previous visit to Ireland as President back in 2019.

Mike Pence, his Vice President, did spend time in the capital during a visit later that year, however – including a brief stop-off at the Áras for a meeting with Michael D Higgins. 

‘It is difficult to call him president, but he is’

During Ireland’s presidential election campaign last year, Connolly was frequently asked whether she would meet with Trump if she were elected and what she would say to him if such a meeting took place. 

Connolly consistently said she would meet Trump in her role as president but in the final TV debate of the campaign she was specifically asked if she would raise the genocide in Gaza.

“If it’s just a meet and greet, then I will meet and greet. If the discussion is genocide, that’s a completely different thing,” Connolly said, adding that she doubted the issue of the genocide would be on the agenda in a meeting with Trump. 

Prior to her election as president and while TD for Galway West, Connolly said on a number of occasions in the Dáil that she has “a difficulty calling him President Trump”.

Connolly made the comment in 2019 in objection to US policies in Venezuela and again in February last year after Trump suggested that the US would “take over” Gaza and turn it into the “Riviera of the Middle East”. 

Since becoming Ireland’s President and in the aftermath of the war on Iran launched by the US and Israel, Connolly said that the attacks were “deliberate assaults on international law” that should be called out “without equivocation”. 

Asked subsequently about Connolly’s comments, Minister for Foreign Affairs Helen McEntee said the government agreed with the President’s comments but was unwilling to say specifically that the US has breached international law.

Asked today if he had any concerns about what might come up at the meeting between Connolly and Trump, the Taoiseach responded: “Not at all. I mean I think, you know, President Connolly is the official head of state of Ireland, and that’s appropriate and proper that the president would meet with President Trump”.

He added: “Be grand”.

- With reporting by Rónán Duffy and Jane Matthews