Taoiseach would welcome a visit by the Queen

TAOISEACH Brian Cowen has said a visit by Queen Elizabeth II to Ireland would be a “good development” and a symbol of how far relations between the two countries have progressed.

Mr Cowen revealed yesterday that the two governments had begun the process of arranging such a visit. He said he hoped it would take place before President Mary McAleese finished her tenure in November of next year.

“We have started the process between both prime ministers’ offices whereby we can look to this prospect. As I say, I would like to see it happening during the tenure of our own president.”

Mr Cowen was speaking following his first formal meeting with new British Prime Minister David Cameron in Downing Street yesterday.

The Taoiseach said the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent agreements had “totally transformed” relations between Ireland and Britain.

The prospect of an exchange of visits by the respective heads of state would be keeping with the “normal courtesies observed between friendly neighbouring states”, he added.

“I think also that the importance of an exchange of state visits says a lot about the modern bilateral relationships we now have.”

He expressed the desire that it occur before President McAleese stepped down because of her work as “bridge-builder for peace”. The president has met the Queen on several occasions, such as during a formal visit by the Queen to Northern Ireland in 2008. A decade previously, in 1998, President McAleese and the Queen jointly opened a memorial peace park in Messines, Belgium, in honour of Irishmen from North and South who fought in the first World War.

At the time, the then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern described that event as “an important symbolic moment of reconciliation in our history”.

A spokeswoman for the president said yesterday that she was looking forward to the prospect of a visit by the Queen “in the near future”.

But Sinn Féin immediately voiced its opposition to the move, saying such a visit would be “totally unacceptable” because the Queen’s role as head of the British armed forces and the forces’ continued presence in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin TD Caoimhghín O Caoláin TD said that while the Saville report exonerating the Bloody Sunday victims was a welcome development, it was only the “tip of the iceberg” in relation to British state killings in the North.

“Until there is complete withdrawal of the British military and the British administration from Ireland, and until there is justice and truth for victims of collusion, no official welcome should be accorded to any officer of the British armed forces of any rank,” he said.