The president of the United States, Joe Biden, continues his visit to the island of Ireland: this Thursday, in Dublin, he met with the President and Prime Minister of the country, and gave a speech before Parliament.
Biden, who also visited Northern Ireland this week, is in the region to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended more than three decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants.
The Democratic leader, who has Irish roots, is making one of his longest trips abroad as president with the aim of defusing Brexit tensions.
For a year now, the Executive Branch in Northern Ireland has been blocked as a result of unionists, defenders of the British Crown, considering that the agreements between London and Brussels distance them from the United Kingdom.
After meeting with Irish President Michael D. Higgins, Biden was asked what it was like “to be home”, to which he replied that “it feels great”.
“I know it sounds silly, but there are so many Irish Americans, like my relatives who came to the United States in 1844, who have never been back here,” he added.
A couple of hours later, he became the fourth US president to address a joint session of the Irish Parliament, after John F. Kennedy in 1963, Ronald Reagan in 1984 and Bill Clinton in 1995.
This Friday, he will return to County Mayo, on the west coast of Ireland, to meet relatives on the other side of his family, that of great-great-grandfather Edward Blewitt.
