So this is it: the big week for the Irish in Washington has arrived – and the Middle East is in flames.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin spent Sunday in Philadelphia – joining the St Patrick’s Day parade in the Pennsylvanian city – and is making his way to the White House on Tuesday.
He is due to meet Donald Trump in the Oval Office as US and Israeli missiles continue to rain down in Iran. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed to the vast majority of oil tankers – and we can all see the evidence of this at Irish forecourts.
What does Martin tell Trump?
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President Catherine Connolly’s St Patrick’s Day message left room for interpretation. She said the “normalisation of war” could never be accepted and Ireland should renew its commitment to peace and diplomacy in line with international law.
The US president seems intent on inflicting further damage on Iran – raising the prospect of more attacks on the strategically vital Kharg Island oil hub – while calling on US allies to deploy vessels to the strait. He has warned that if Nato allies don’t help the US reopen the waterway then the alliance faces a “very bad” future.
Martin was very clear on Sunday that Shannon Airport was not being used by the US military – and there was no “strong evidence” that weaponry was being transported through Irish airspace.
“No evidence”, the Taoiseach seemed to acknowledge, was doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement. He admitted that it was very difficult to “intervene” or “investigate” whether the rules were being broken.
The disruption to global oil and gas supplies has been described as the most significant in history. Europe and Ireland – along with much of the global economy – are greatly exposed.
With the Taoiseach brushing up on his notes, the Tánaiste is in London where the talk is of “de-escalation”. On Monday Simon Harris meets his counterpart chancellor Rachel Reeves and deputy prime minister David Lammy after some parading there on Sunday.
They, like him, are grappling with possible cost-of-living measures – which seem ever more inevitable as the conflict drags into its third week. With Reeves poised to announce a package there, pressure will remain on Dublin to do the same.
Harris says there will be support for struggling households if the conflict becomes protracted.
But the choice of when and how to act is not agreed within the Coalition, it seems.
Niall Collins, Minister of State at the Department of Justice, has called for the coming hospitality VAT reduction to be scrapped – and the money set aside for that measure instead used to cushion the blow of rising fuel costs.
The Minister for Finance, however, is a big fan of the VAT move and Harris was quick to remind Collins that he voted for the change.
The Taoiseach and several Ministers will have little time to get their bearings after Washington when they’ll be due at the European Council meeting scheduled on Thursday.
Again, the Middle East will top the agenda – and who knows what the state of affairs will be by then.
United Nations secretary general António Guterres has been invited to a working lunch. The beleaguered Guterres has been pleading in vain for an end to hostilities in Iran and Lebanon.
On a visit to Beirut over the weekend, he said the Israeli onslaught was “rendering large portions of Lebanon uninhabitable” and that attacks on UN peacekeepers “are completely unacceptable and they must stop”.
European foreign ministers are in Brussels on Monday in advance of the council meeting. They will be chewing over those comments by Trump on Sunday – and already the EU foreign policy chief has suggested there could be a measure of assistance for the US president.
European Commission vice-president Kaja Kallas said they could look at the existing European mission in the Red Sea to see if its mandate could be changed and swung round to Hormuz.
Amid the turmoil it seems the threats to the State haven’t changed much since 2024 – according to the Taoiseach, that is.
The national risk assessment for last year was never published. The Green Party’s Roderic O’Gorman asked him where it was, with Martin saying that one in September 2024 “remains valid”.
There is, he said, likely to be one published later this year. It’s probably not unwise to wait a little longer to see how current machinations play out.
