US vice president Joe Biden has said Britain's surprise decision to leave the EU would "complicate life" for the island of Ireland and for Scotland.
Mr Biden said European partners were crucial to the security and economic prosperity of the US and so a “new road ahead” would be found.
Speaking on a conference call where he reflected on his six-day trip to Ireland, the former Senator spoke about the mutual love between the two countries, the personal discoveries he had made during his latest visit and business matters he had attended to.
He talked about his new-found relation by marriage to former Irish president Mary Robinson, his discussions with Taoiseach Enda Kenny on the process of closing Guantanamo Bay and even how the poetry of WB Yeats had helped him correct a childhood stammer.
President Obama requested Mr Biden attend various matters including the recent issues regarding flags and parades in Northern Ireland and humanitarian assistance to migrants from the Middle East.
"We have vital trade and economic ties between both our nations and those were discussed and they became more poignant in light of the British decision to exit the European Union which is going to complicate life for Ireland and Northern Ireland and Scotland. And so we had a great deal to talk about," he said during a half hour long call.
"I learned of the surprising outcome - a surprise to most of us anyway - of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union but I also made it clear that although that is not our preferred position...we have to respect the wish of the British people."
He said all of the US's allies in Europe are indispensable to their economic and national security.
“And we will work closely with all of our partners and navigate a new road ahead.”
It was not Mr Biden’s first time in Ireland, having travelled to both the south and north on previous occasions, but this trip had been planned with family members and particularly his late son Beau who died of brain cancer at the age of 46 last year.
The vice president spoke of his affinity with Irish poets and how he had previously overcome a stammer partly through reading WB Yeats’ works aloud in front of a mirror.
However, he also invoked Yeats to help issue a cautionary note on the political realities of modern times.
Quoting the poem Easter 1916, and the lines "All's changed, changed utterly: a terrible beauty is born", he said it described today's world perhaps better than the one in which it had been written.
Changes and challenges in the past 15 years alone, he said, have included issues like terrorism, migration, infectious disease and economic anxiety.
“The inevitable human reaction of fear and anger all provide fertile terrain for reactionary politicians home and abroad, and demagogues peddling xenophobia, nationalism, isolationism.”
Mr Biden spoke fondly of his speech to over 3,000 people in the rain at Dublin Castle and his travels around the country where he was met with flag-waving crowds illustrative of the affection, he said, between Ireland and America.
