THE TAOISEACH will meet President Barack Obama at the White House this morning for talks on the global economy, recent developments in the North, immigration reform in the US and the possible resettlement of Guantánamo Bay detainees in Ireland.
The meeting is scheduled to last 40 minutes and it will only be the third bilateral meeting Mr Obama has had with any foreign leader since his inauguration. The bilateral meeting comes at the start of a day of St Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House that will include the traditional shamrock ceremony and a reception for almost 400 people.
The president will join the Taoiseach at a lunch on Capitol Hill hosted by House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mr Obama is expected to drop by during a meeting at the White House between Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers and national security adviser Jim Jones.
Irish officials have welcomed the White House events as an affirmation of the new US administration’s commitment to the relationship with Ireland. Mr Obama will be joined at this morning’s meeting by vice-president Joe Biden and secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who yesterday met Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin for 45 minutes of talks.
The Taoiseach will present Mr Obama and Mr Biden with limited editions of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf and The Cure at Troy with inscriptions by the poet. In his dedication to Mr Obama, Mr Heaney quotes from the poem’s introduction of the character of Beowulf as “a man who comes in an hour of need . . . there was no one else like him alive”.
First Lady Michelle Obama will receive a collection of Eavan Boland’s poems, and daughters Sasha and Malia will be given Irish children’s books.
Entertainment at this evening’s reception includes a reading by poet Paul Muldoon and a performance by the Shannon Rovers. The numbers invited to the event have expanded to the point it will take place in two rooms at the White House, with the president and the Taoiseach repeating their remarks in each.
In New York yesterday, Mr Cowen announced the conclusion of business contracts worth over €100 million, on the first full day of his St Patrick’s visit to the United States.
Speaking at a breakfast organised by Enterprise Ireland, Mr Cowen expressed the hope the value of the deals signed yesterday, which involve 92 companies, would reach over €400 million in the coming years.
Mr Cowen told the business people who attended the breakfast at the Academy of Sciences that Ireland was now the 10th-largest investor in the United States. He added the US was the biggest component of foreign direct investment with over 450 American companies operating in Ireland having invested more than $55 billion. “But today, much of Ireland’s economic, industrial and export growth comes from Irish-owned enterprises. In fact, the emergence of an enterprise culture in Ireland demonstrates the significant spin-off benefits of overseas investment in stimulating local entrepreneurs.”
He said start-up business activity in Ireland was one of the strongest in Europe, with 300 new high-tech companies established over the past four years.
Speaking later at a US-Ireland Council lunch in New York, Mr Cowen said that, as a small trading nation, Ireland had been badly affected by the global turmoil but the problems facing it were not unique.
“I believe it is how we respond to these challenges that will define our potential and our success in the years ahead. As an agile, outward-looking economy, we can also benefit more quickly from the upturn when it comes.”