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SINN FÉIN WILL not be attending any St Patrick’s Day events in the White House this year, party leader Mary Lou McDonald has announced.
She said the party was making the move “as a principled stance against the threat of mass expulsion of the Palestinian people from Gaza”.
However she said she “absolutely believes” Taoiseach Micheál Martin should travel to Washington and to the White House, urging him “not to equivocate” on the issue of Gaza.
In comments earlier this month, US President Donald Trump proposed an American takeover of Gaza while also suggesting a permanent displacement of Palestinians from the enclave.
McDonald said that the Irish people had watched Trump’s pronouncements on his plans for the region unfold “with horror”.
Sinn Féin faced calls to withdraw from White House events last year, and the SDLP have already confirmed they will boycott the engagements for the second year in a row.
Speaking in Washington last March, McDonald defended her decision to travel for the Joe Biden-hosted St Patrick’s events, saying she couldn’t refuse the “unparalleled access” on offer.
She said it was her “responsibility and duty” to speak to anyone she can “in a bid to stop” the spiralling death toll in Gaza.
McDonald and party deputy leader Michelle O’Neill, the Northern Ireland First Minister, hosted a press conference in Dublin this morning.
McDonald confirmed that neither she nor O’Neill would travel to the US this year around St Patrick’s Day. However, some party representatives are still due to attend events in New York.
The party enjoys a large amount of support from the Irish-American population across the US and usually stages fundraising events in the two east coast cities and in other areas with large Irish-American communities.
While no official White House invitation has yet been issued or accepted by any Irish party, Taoiseach Micheál Martin is expected to attend the usual shamrock ceremony at the White House alongside Trump in the lead up to St Patrick’s Day.
He has engagements in Texas and Washington throughout the week of 10 March and is also expected to attend the US House speaker’s lunch, the Ireland Funds dinner and other traditional Irish events while in DC.
McDonald says the Taoiseach should go to the White House.
— Christina Finn (@christinafinn8) February 21, 2025
However, she says he must be ‘clear and frank’ in his conversations with Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/UEzrC10NoQ
Asked about Sinn Féin’s decision, Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe told RTÉ’s Claire Byrne this morning that it was “one for them to explain and defend”.
“I believe the appropriate decision for the government of Ireland is to continue to engage with President Trump and with future presidents of the United States of America,” he added.
Donohoe said the US was an important “contributor and sponsor” of “the development we want to see in Northern Ireland”.
He said it would be up to Sinn Féin “to reconcile wanting to see that happen with the decision they are making”.
Asked whether Taoiseach Micheál Martin should still meet Trump in light of the US President’s recent comments about Gaza and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Donohoe said it was more important than ever for the Taoiseach to do so.
“If there was ever a time for dialogue and engagement, if there was ever a time for trying to reach across divides, it’s now.”
Speaking at the Dublin press conference McDonald said she would go to the White House if she was Taoiseach.
Asked whether, due to her role as First Minister, she should attend even if McDonald didn’t, Michelle O’Neill said there was a “distinct difference” between her position and that of Taoiseach and that St Patrick’s Day was a day for Ireland.
Asked whether Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly should attend, O’Neill said it was the DUP politician’s “own call”.
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It wouldn’t surprise me if there were no invitations to the White House this year for any one. Nothing to do with Israel but with Irish Politicians being unable to keep their big mouths shut and bad mouthing Trump previously. He has a good memory and is not forgiving.
@Des Hanrahan:
Trump hasn’t got a brain,never mind a memory.
I think the whole Irish visit should be boycotted.
Never thought I would see the day I agreed with Mary Lou.
@Mary.E.: Ireland should shut up about foreign wars first of all Mary and focus on putting Irish citizens first for once
@J B: THe Companies that make the pharmaceuticals and who are based in Ireland are AMERICAN owned companies…… Not sure that is going to last long. Likewise tariffs on the IT sector. Phara guys are big deal in the US too
@Des Hanrahan: “Nothing to do with Israel” Why mention them so ? It is not like everyone in America is in blind support of everything that they are up to.
” but with Irish Politicians being unable to keep their big mouths shut” – Someone has to call out the war crimes
@Val O’Connell: And who is your bestie, Palestine? Send your kids over to them and they will have a dance party with their coffins
Er you weren’t invited love
@Robert: I wasn’t invited either, but I, too, would like to announce that I’m definitely not going.
@honey badger: you know what, the grammys suck and next year I wouldn’t be bothered going **would absolutely go if asked**
@Luke Littler: I wouldn’t know mate. I’ll go in and check later for you
Trump is openly calling for ethnic cleansing. Horrible person as are all the skum supporting him. SF, who i don’t personally support, are perfectly correct here
@FoxyBoiiYT: SfStunt. Let the govt take the heat. If SF are as progressive as they claim to be, there is a great opportunity for them to go there and do a Trump on Trump, calling him out in front of the worlds media.
@FoxyBoiiYT: Thank you. She said the Palestinian people, why are the Trumpites saying she supports Hamas.
@FoxyBoiiYT:
Same here, definitely no fan of SF but they threaded the needle on this. They acknowledged Martin should go but they wouldn’t.
Given the febrile attitude in the US capital at the moment, good call.
@FoxyBoiiYT: I’m sure SF are inconsolable that they don’t have your support!
@FoxyBoiiYT: Sir YOU are calling for ethnic cleansing by supporting Muslim terrorists!
@Alan: And making Ireland look open to being claimed by Muslim terrorists
@Declan Tiberius Kelly: Palestinian peopld voted for Hamas, cheer on Hamas and clapped and cheered for the bodies of dead babies.
@Alan: they don’t get a sit down with him ,and they have already called him out in the media
@J B: and you invoke your god in a statement calling for mass genocidal murder of men women and children. Which loving god do you believe supports such murder.
@North Phone Bowe: You are calling for Muslim terrorists to ethnically cleanse the West. Palestinians voted Hamas, cheer on Hamas and danced and cheered over the bodies of dead children. Let it be known that you are supporting that.
@Beachvibe: what are you smoking there. Show me anywhere that any Muslim country has called for the deportation of any nationality from their own home land.
@J B: ohhh right you mean the fable of the superior Chosen people, is that the same as the superior aryan race.
@North Phone Bowe: They don’t call for deportation. Muslim terrorists blow people up.
@North Phone Bowe: Well clearly its them who believe they were superior chosen. You’re white and you aren’t even happy that you are so that rules that theory out.
@Beachvibe: again try facts. USA supplied and supported by NATO allies have bombed more people in past 80years than anyone else.
@FoxyBoiiYT: Aren’t Hamas trying to ethnic cleanse the Jewish people? You extreme leftists have selective ‘knowledge’ of every situation. MAGA
@J B: What a nasty pos you are. Pity someone wouldn’t ethnically cleanse you and your ilk from the face of the earth. Not enough showers for the likes of you
@FoxyBoiiYT: You are already hoping for Muslim terrorists to ethnically cleanse the West. Maybe we can beat them to it and kick you out?
@Beachvibe: That’s your twisted take on things. Where’s the sharia law ye lot have been promising/predicting for years now?
@FoxyBoiiYT: Already happening. Sure look at Muslim Sisters of Éire taking the reigns! We don’t want. So sod your activist stance
@North Phone Bowe:
You won’t find any Jews in mossie countries
@North Phone Bowe:
Make that 100 years and the commie filth rush ahead with 100 million plus.
Hilarious, and none of them invited yet ,lord twill be Hilarious if Trump doesn’t invite any of them .
@Gerry Campbell:
It will be a damn relief.
Doubt anyone is happy to be in Trump’s company.
@Beachvibe:
I am not a supporter of terrorism nor am I a supporter of Dictators who’s only aim is to control and take over what they don’t own.
@Mary.E.: You clearly are a supporter of terrorists you support Palestine and those people have been throwing parties with dead children in coffins mocking them
SF should go and tell MM to stop at home as he will bow to the US Government as he’s a puppet boy for the EU as we in Ireland are oversubscribed with migration as every government department has a waiting list tied to it now because we can’t cope with all the people that have came into Ireland through illegal immigration ….
@Tommy:
Well done, you shoveled you pathetic little anti immigration rant in there.
You deserve a medal.
The 0.6% of the population you represent will be proud of you.
@Tommy: we need to put a stop to looking after all from foreign lands as we cannot house our own people. Sack the civil servants spending our taxes on the likes of the bike shed. I bet MM should stay at home as with the others, clearly a state finances jolly..aren’t we as taxpayers so good for paying this!
@P. J.: If you think that 99.4% of Irish people support open borders, you are an even bigger amadan than I gave you credit for!
@Brian Hunt:
Well if they didn’t vote accordingly, their opinion is irrelevant.
That’s a democracy for you.
@P. J.: Irish gov spent 1 billion euro on asylum seekers last year and 50 million recently to fund the Ukraine war. F all the anti Irish cucks.
@P. J.: And if you voted for open borders LEAVE. Forget foreign wars, lets see an Irish civil war happen first to get rid of the anti Irish cucks among us.
@Beachvibe:
Haha hahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha
Let me catch my breath..
Haha hahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha hahahaha
@P. J.: you mean 60% of the population most of them are a silent majority. I deal with the public in my job on a one to one basis and the majority think there are too many people of the Muslim faith entering the country, and they see what will happen in a hundred years or so they become the majority and things will change for the worst, majority rule to the way they like things.
@Beachvibe: right enough I can see you on the front line ,at least until your mammy calls you in for your tea,
Civil war ,get away out of that you feckwit
@sean weir: No Sean genuinely. You are obsessed with war you far left activists. If you want Ireland to join a war so badly then it should be a civil war. Not a war abroad. The only worthy war would be the result of kicking anti Irish cucks like you off this island.
@P. J.: Who’s gonna pay for the illegals when the big multinationals pull out of Ireland? Ireland will be a poor country in the near future and with all the 3rd worldies here the economy will collapse. You woke extreme-leftists aren’t the brightest really. Oh and over 75% of Irish people are against the illegal invasion.
People need to start copping on fast here, it’s the US multinationals that fund a large chunk of our economy, start having a go at them and they might just start pulling out, watch how fast our economy will go back to the early 80s !
@Jak Oshe: US multinationals are about profit. Take pharmaceuticals. Last year they generate almost €billion exports from Ireland. € 20 billion of those went to USA. No profit oriented business will give up 80% of income to please or maintain the 20%. Most of that 80% goes to EU and must be produced in EU to have full market access. So the doom and gloom scaremongering holds no water at all.
@North Phone Bowe: €80 Billion *
@North Phone Bowe: *€100 Billion
No one’s going incase people haven’t noticed
Didnt see her objecting when the ‘RA were expelling people from the North
Why should he absolutely go ? They get to have a little holiday for what.?
@Karen Marten:
24 hour access to the most powerfull people in the world
Well done Sinn Fein
They weren’t invited not even one td, it’s like someone being fired and then saying I quit.
@J B: Incredibly funny remark, great retort !
The government’s job is to speak only for Ireland’s issues and shut up about foreign wars.
@Beachvibe: “The government’s job is to speak only for Ireland’s issues and shut up about foreign wars. ”
NO WHERE IN ANY LEGISLATION , TRADITIONS OR PROTOCOL is that opinion supported on anything ! Like all Governments of the free world, they are perfectly entitled to offer their two cents . Utter nonsense. You clearly struggle to understand what the informal policy of “neutrality” is. Much like all Zionists who take massive issue with Ireland and Irish people.
@Val O’Connell: Since YOU want to be an activist you can gtfo and go to work for your Hamas masters understood? You don’t get to drag us down with you into foreign wars but if you try a war will surely break out here because the far left won’t win without a fight since you are taking our autonomy and neutrality from us
@Val O’Connell: You hate your own. You’re all for foreigners not for the Irish so who are you to talk?
@Beachvibe: Do not address people in a manner that you would not dare to .in person. You are beneath in every possible classification in life, know your place before its done for you . If you had brains , you would be dangerous so thanks for the laugh . You KNOW NOTHING . NO ONE WOULD MISTAKE YOU FOR INTELLIGENT . You and your kind have no relevancy when it comes to decision made. You are just a waste of oxygen and its me and my kind who call the shots and stomp out loud mouth wasters like you. Know your place boy
@Beachvibe: “hate your own”? Classless, uneducated loud mouth workshy welfare leeching s c u m are not my own ! You offer nothing to your own family, never mind your community or country. You would not last 1 minute talking to people like that in person so spare us your disease on line . Nothing in what you said rebuts the fact that we are not a neutral country and you are breathtakingly uneducated on what you are attempting to discuss.
@Beachvibe: “so who are you to talk? ”
Being vastly better educated, vastly wealthier and connected to people in power; vastly superiorly well breed than you and loud mouths like you. You and your kind are held with contempt by your superiors and you know it. Enjoy your Walter Mitty moments on line.
It’s a ff/fg exercise on how to rob the Irish taxpayer for the annual alcoholic s day out stateside with leprechaun airlines hopefully will dump the lot over the Atlantic
@liam ward:
May need to work on that inferiority complex
SF delegation to fly with the shamrocks to Tehran. Hamas want to ethnically cleanse Israel, Trump wants to ethnically cleanse Gaza and Putin wants to ethnically cleanse western Europe. A lot cleaning going on. mehole and simone will cleanse any hole if the price is right. The end is neigh!
@Njall: you make it sound like trump was the one bombing the s##te out of gaza
@Damien Leahy: what do you call supplying the planes and bombs for the bombings of Gaza
@North Phone Bowe: What do you call the Irish gov giving 50 million euro to fund the Ukraine war?
@Beachvibe: try answering a with an answer, if you can formulate one, rather than deflection.
@North Phone Bowe: Ireland is also contibuting to those wars so you can’t talk
@Beachvibe: I can and do, shame on successive FFG governments in have any input whatsoever with the Zionist state of Israel. They should be treated as the pariah they are.
@North Phone Bowe: Nope Ireland should be neutral. You support Muslim terrorists. Your comments feel treasonous and you deserve to be sent to Hamas.
@Beachvibe: Says who ? Village i d i o t s or the bar stool loud mouth who do not understand the “neutrality” policy? Treason against who? According to who? S i m ple tons like you? You and your kind got roundly rejected in recent elections
@North Phone Bowe: he’s only in power a month. Been a ceasefire since then. I think you’ll find it was bidens administration.
@North Phone Bowe:
A good friend
@Beachvibe:
Freedom is expensive.
@North Phone Bowe:
Ireland took back what was there’s after 800 years.
Isreal took back their land after 2000 years.
Respect.
Considering that during the US presidential campaign the clown harris, our Taoiseach at the time, more than likely thinking trump would lose, publicly called him a gowl, did plenty of damage to Irish/ US relations and has guaranteed no invitation to the white house for St. Patrick’s Day. The joke that is our legacy media has seemed to have forgotten this.
Trump will be devastated.
Sinn Fèin have the unenviale liberty as an opposition party to pick and choose on an hourly basis what’s it’s policy is. They are a natural party of opposition and long may it be so
@James O’Grady: wow that’s bleak, FF and FG ultimately in power forever, and don’t they know it with supporters like you, laughing their way to every general election knowing they can’t be beaten.
Truly it’s a sad lament on the psyche of our electorate like you !
@Jak Oshe:
Opposition is a rag tag bunch
of rich kids and shop window dummies for a sinister terrorests gang.
So, Mary Lou is forgoing nibbles and drinks at an as yet unannounced party that nobody has even been invited to yet. Such courage. She will, I assume, be going to their various fundraisers that milk the profoundly gullible for money to send back to the old country. (via their northern offices, of course. It’s important to avoid party funding rules here – they’re true partitionists when there’s cash money involved.) Tiocfaidh ár lolly!
@honey badger: speaking of gullible, remind us what smug 5 h 1 t e harris, our then Taoiseach publicity called trump during the US presidential campaign? The populist clown done more damage to Irish/ US relations in one soundbite than any Irish politician before. And then refused to take it back. There’ll be no bowl of shamrocks this year thanks to him.
I won’t be going to the Oscars this year. Cillian Murphy should go though
@mickey mac:
We will vote againced the long Dail summer break knowing that the government will vote it through.
Were you invited Mary
Sinn Fein ruining relations with the USA. If they ever got in, they’d absolutely ruin this country.
@DavyDoDa:
Plan is the isolate the country from the democratic west and turn the Irish in to another st1t hole cuba.
This is more nonsense from Sinn Fein.if they were in government and invited to the white house they would definitely go.its nothing got to do with taking a stance on moral grounds.they are just trying for a political point score..they are beyond pathetic.
@morgan crowe:
They may have got word that they are not being invited anyway and are getting there face saver in ahead.
Who care
No reason for Mary Lou to go. She is not the leader of the country. Even the opposition parties have rejected her and her party. Blondie O’Neill should tell her to bog off. “Jarry” was not joined by the SF Dáil leader (prior to him entering the Dáil) when he was THE man…..so why is Mary Lou parading around?
@Val O’Connell:
She’s parading around putting on a brave face hoping her days are not numbered.
Can i go instead
I take this means they won’t accept all Trump’s American Dollars for Their Fundraising
@Tim Brennan:
When Mr Trump attended one of PSFs 1000 dollar a head fund raisers, They took his money.
What are the Odds that SF decide to get rid of Mary Lou if given the chance and Belfast has no say ? As a leader she has been brutal
It is interesting that SF seem to forget their own history when so many people wanted nothing to do with SF, but they did so for the good of peace on these Islands.
They should do the same with the elected leader of the USA, and it been around St. Patrick’s Day, our Patron Saint.
@Paud O Riain:
PSF do not have an Irish Jersey to pull on.
Like something from a Carry On movie is SF.
@Manc Chris:
Carry on up the falls
The 25% tariff on pharmaceuticals raised concern.
Can you handle that hit?
The Irish economy seems to be heavily dependent on US overseas investments.
Is it wise to put ‘principal’ before bread?
Does it matter what Irish opinion is in the first place?
The US will support Israel in preference to Ireland’s opinion.
Mary Lou is like Dev back when he sent Michael Collins to England to negotiate the treaty knowing that he couldn’t get a 32 county Ireland, and then abandoned a unified approach, started a civil war etc. Totally motivated by personal ambition. Mary Lou is similar.
have your say