'A chairde...'How Queen Elizabeth II ignored advice and spoke in Irish at Dublin Castle

A last-minute breach of protocol by the queen of England herself led to the historic moment, writes Flor Mac Carthy

As Queen Elizabeth began her address ‘A Uachtaráin, agus a chairde..’ Mary McAleese was caught on camera exclaiming just one word: ‘wow!’. Picture: Peter Muhly/AFP via Getty Images

For any State Visit, the back-room planning goes on for months, sometimes years. For the first-ever visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the Republic of Ireland the possibility was skirted around for decades, and for most of the 20th century it would have been unthinkable.

So it was no surprise that meticulous protocol planning went back and forth between Dublin and London on every conceivable detail when finally, in May 2011, the first State Visit by a British monarch to the Republic of Ireland was about to become a reality.