Simon Coveney to meet with US Speaker Nancy Pelosi 

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney's arrival in the US coincides with the lifting of the US travel ban on tourists from the EU, a move that the minister has welcomed.

Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney will meet US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi in Washington DC today.

Mr Coveney left New York for the US capital last night after a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov.

On the agenda with Ms Pelosi will be US/Irish relations, issues affecting the North, Brexit, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mr Coveney will also meet a number of cross-party senators and members of Congress including the Friends of Ireland caucus.

Brexit will feature prominently as it did yesterday when the minister briefed the European American Chamber of Commerce in New York.

Mr Coveney has also met with EU foreign ministers, and held talks with senior UN officials on the conflicts in Ethiopia and the Middle East.

The UN General Assembly week is under way in New York and, as part of Ireland’s presidency of the UN Security Council, Mr Coveney and Taoiseach Mícheál Martin held bilateral meetings with the governments of Kosovo, Algeria, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

Mr Coveney’s arrival in the US coincides with the lifting of the US travel ban on tourists from the EU, a move that the minister has welcomed.

He said:“This is something that we, along with our EU colleagues, have been advocating for a considerable time and we have alerted the US administration to the high levels of vaccination within Ireland,” Mr Coveney said.