IRELAND REMAINS important for the US, and the Obama administration hopes the strong economic ties between the two countries will continue, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has said.
In an interview with RTÉ’s Washington correspondent Charlie Bird last night, Mrs Clinton rejected the suggestion that Ireland had “fallen down the agenda” in the US and said she hoped to visit Ireland with President Obama.
“I think there’s so much more to our relationship than even the importance of the Northern Ireland peace process,” she said, adding that she was very proud of the role her husband Bill Clinton and George Mitchell had played in the peace process.
Mrs Clinton, while admitting that the US faced an “ongoing challenge on how to create and keep jobs”, played down fears that US investment in Ireland could be adversely affected by Mr Obama’s pledge to make it harder for American firms to shelter overseas income from taxes imposed by US authorities, while offering incentives for the same companies to create jobs at home.
“I believe Irish companies have created about 80,000 jobs in the United States, and American companies have created about 90,000 jobs in Ireland, so we expect there to continue to be a lot of good economic incentives to create and keep jobs in both of our countries,” she said.
Asked about the undocumented Irish in the US, Mrs Clinton said she hoped moves can be made to address the issue.
“It is part of our need to revamp our immigration system . . . We hope that we will be able to work out some exchanges, some work programmes that will go back and forth between Ireland and the United States while we are working on the ongoing problem of immigration reform.”
Mrs Clinton also discussed the recent violence in Northern Ireland, saying she was “both heartsick at the loss of life, and . . . outraged at the actions taken by a small, criminal element to try to provoke a response and disrupt the progress that has been made”.
She added that she was heartened by the unified condemnation of the killings.
“[It] gave me an extraordinary sense of encouragement that we were going to get through this . . . that these despicable acts were not going to derail anything,” she said.
Mrs Clinton talked also of the changes to US foreign policy since Mr Obama’s presidency began.
“In the travels that I have already undertaken, I have carried a message that we want to listen, we want to consult, we want to work in partnership . . . we do have a much different approach to the prior administration.”