Taoiseach says vast majority will warmly welcome Queen

QUEEN ELIZABETH’S visit to Ireland next month will be of major historic significance and will be “warmly welcomed by the vast majority” of Irish people, Taoiseach Enda Kenny told British prime minister David Cameron yesterday.

Mr Kenny said the programme had been “well thought out”. He said it was “very sensitive and the fact that she intends to visit the Garden of Remembrance and the Islandbridge memorial speaks for itself and history and tradition on both sides”.

Welcoming Mr Kenny to Downing Street, Mr Cameron said he believed the Queen’s visit was “going to be a great moment for both our countries and I’m excited about coming to join in on that as well”.

Mr Kenny said that Ireland was looking “forward indeed to the [Queen’s] coming – one of the few countries that she hasn’t had the opportunity to visit is the 26 counties during her long reign”.

Questioned about the fact that the visit begins on the anniversary of the Dublin-Monaghan 1974 bombings, Mr Kenny said he had reminded Mr Cameron “that obviously there may be a small measure of protest arising from that”.

However, he appeared to rule out calling on the British, as he has been asked to do by families of the victims, to open up intelligence files that were not available to the Barron Inquiry, which investigated both atrocities. “We also made the point that we don’t want a situation where you have endless, open-ended inquiries [but] that there are a great number of sensitive issues that need to be very carefully considered,” said Mr Kenny.

The two men discussed the recent killing of PSNI constable Ronan Kerr by dissident republicans, with Mr Cameron saying he believed that co-operation between the PSNI and the Garda Síochána had “never been better”.

“We need to work on that and make sure that continues to be the case. I think the response of everyone – North and South – to the terrible murder of the police officer recently has been extremely positive and we will continue to work together,” said Mr Cameron.

Citing the actions of the GAA and other organisations after Constable Kerr’s killing, Mr Kenny said: “The symbolism of what happened following the killing of Constable Ronan Kerr was so powerful that the entire island of Ireland, on all sides of the political divide, supporting organisations and all the churches have said we do not want any more of this; we are not going back to those dark days.”

In his speech at financial news agency Bloomberg, Mr Kenny said Ireland and Britain had “a unique relationship that has been transformed in my lifetime, founded on mutual respect, trust and opportunity, friendship and support, including financial support in these more difficult times”.