Queen Elizabeth sends St Patrick’s Day wishes a decade after visit

President Michael D Higgins has told Britain's Queen Elizabeth that her visit to Ireland in 2011 was "such a moment of healing".

Mr Higgins has responded to the queen after she conveyed her “congratulations, together with my best wishes to the people of Ireland” ahead of St Patrick’s Day on Wednesday.

“This year marks 10 years since my visit to Ireland, which I remember fondly, and it marks a significant centenary across these islands,” the queen said. “We share ties of family, friendship and affection – the foundation of our partnership that remains as important today as ten years ago. Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh go léir.”

In response, Mr Higgins said he extended his “warmest appreciation” on behalf of the people of Ireland for “your good wishes on our national day”. “Your special memory of your visit to Ireland ten years ago this year, is one that is shared and invoked regularly by all of us in Ireland, being as it was in its generosity of spirit such a moment of healing,” he said. “It has done so much to deepen our shared sense of the breadth and vibrancy of the connections between our two countries at every level. It will continue to inspire the achievement of those possibilities in the future that we might share.”

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Mr Higgins also said that St Patrick’s Day will be celebrated in the “hearts of generations of Irish people who have made their home in Britain, and their British friends and family – as well as by the many British people who have happily made their home here”. “I know that the movement and circulation of our peoples is a source of continuing joy for us both,” he concluded. “Guím Lá Fhéile Pádraig shona agus síochánta ort agus ar do mhuintir.”

The queen and her husband Prince Philip made a State visit to Ireland in May 2011, following an invitation from then president Mary McAleese. It was the first visit by a reigning British monarch to Ireland in 100 years. During her time in Ireland, the queen laid a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance and the National War Memorial Gardens, visited Croke Park, the Rock of Cashel in Co Tipperary, the English Market in Co Cork and attended a State dinner in her honour at Dublin Castle.

The queen acknowledged the “painful legacy” of the relationship between Britain and Ireland in a speech she gave at Dublin Castle but said no one who looked to the future over the past centuries could have imagined the strength of the bonds that now exist between the two islands.